CS-E5210 - Usability evaluation, 26.02.2019-14.05.2019
Kurssiasetusten perusteella kurssi on päättynyt 14.05.2019 Etsi kursseja: CS-E5210
Osion kuvaus
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** NEW: DEADLINE MOVED TO SUNDAY NIGHT - NEW DL IS 26 MAY 23:55 **
The purpose of the diary is to provide you with an additional opportunity to learn about usability evaluations and research methodology. The learning diary is less connected to the schedule and hurdles of your project, and this allows you to think about methodological problems in more detail.
The diary is written as an individual exercise, but discussing its contents with others is permitted (and even encouraged!).
You must organize your diary into the sections and subsections that are given below.
Each of the 5 sections is evaluated with 0–4 points, giving you a total of 20 points from the diary. The recommended maximum length of the diary is 600 words / section = 3000 words / entire diary. 600 words is approximately 2 pages of text with 1.5 line spacing.
High points will be awarded to those diaries that:
- Relate their thoughts to literature (academic and/or practitioner-oriented).
- Are “confessional”, i.e., reflect on problems that were encountered within the group project, analyse them, and identify hindsight solutions on how the challenge could have been tackled in a better way.
Section 1. A usability evaluation challenge
Choose one challenge or problem that your diary will be focused on and which relates to the evaluation project that you are doing during this spring. You can choose challenge suggested by e.g., literature that you read for the pre-exa, or you can adapt such a challenge for your needs, or you can pick your own challenge. Examples of challenges are (these are sampled from Hornbaek 2006, p. 97–98, see the Conclusion section):
- How the quality of interaction can and should be evaluated?
- How could the outcome of interaction be better evaluated?
- How could usability evaluations better address long-term usability instead of just first-time use of a system?
- How could objective and subjective measures be better triangulated or used together in usability evaluations?
- How could satisfaction be evaluated other ways in addition to post-study interviews and questionnaires?
Remember that these are just examples. Your challenge may also focus on other matters, such as:
- How to evaluate products whose user group differs a lot of your personal life experience?
- How a particular aspect of usability (e.g., safety) could be better evaluated?
- How realism (ecological validity) could be improved in a particular type of evaluation that your project exemplified?
- etc.
Organise this section into the following subsections:
1.1 The research challenge (express the challenge in a question format)
1.2 How the challenge related to the project
1.3 Why this challenge was important
1.4 Background material (e.g., literature) related to the challenge
Section 2. Research planning
Related to the challenge that you chose in Section1:
2.1 Methodological obstacles and opportunities (related to the challenge at the planning phase)
2.2 Methodological choices (what methods did you plan to use in the project)
2.3 Methods vs the challenge (how do the methods relate to the challenge: e.g.,, did they take the challenge into account)
2.4 Hindsight (what would have been a better plan that would have better tackled the challenge?)
Section 3.Expert evaluation
Related to the challenge that you chose in Section1:
3.1 Methods (what methods did you actually apply in your project)
3.2 Validity problems (what problems did your methods have, related to the challenge)
3.3 Hindsight (what changes would you do to your methods if you would carry out the evaluation again)
Section 4. Empirical evaluation
Related to the challenge that you chose in Section1:
4.1 Methods (what methods did you actually apply in your project)
4.2 Validity problems (what problems did your methods have, related to the challenge)
4.3 Hindsight (what changes would you do to your methods if you would carry out the evaluation again)
Section 5. Final report
Related to the challenge that you chose in Section1:
5.1 Limitations (overall, how did the challenge limit the generalizability of your results)
5.2 Improvements (your suggestions on how to improve usability evaluation methods so that they better take into account the challenge that you had chosen)