INF 385P – Course Update – February 27, 2004
Classmates:
There are several things I owe you. So, by way of level-setting, here’s what I think you need to know.
Accessibility
A big “thank you” to Dr. Slatin for sensitizing us all to the need to worry about accessibility of our designs, and for pointing us down the path towards doing something about it. You will find a link to his Powerpoint presentation (which he just barely started into) associated with “Week 5” on our course website, under “Schedule.”
Usability Lab Testing
Thank you for joining me, and for suffering silently while having to stand in a crowded lab to hear me talk about end-user testing. Just to round out your instruction on this topic, consider the following resources:
- Also at “Week 5” on the course “Schedule” there is a copy of a Powerpoint presentation of mine on the ethics of user testing.
- You need to be aware of the UT IRB (Institutional Review Board) web site. Guidance and forms regarding the testing of human subjects is at http://www.utexas.edu/research/rsc/humanresearch/. Again I say, you will NOT be expected to submit such forms to conduct your final project UNLESS you have some vision that you might do publishable work and want to submit it to a journal or a conference.
- I promised to send you the link to the STC Usability SIG. Herewith: http://www.stcsig.org/usability/. Of particular value is the “usability toolkit,” which you’ll find under the link “Usability Resources.” Indeed, one of those resources is a thorough (maybe TOO thorough!) checklist to help you prepare for human testing – testck.doc.
- There’s another pretty good overview at http://usability.gov/methods/usability_testing.html
- There are some good, crisp articles in Branagan, R. J. (Ed.), 2001, Design by people for people: Essays on usability. Chicago: Usability Professionals Association. The articles I’d point you to are:
o Dumas – Usability testing methods: Think-aloud protocols (p. 119)
o Tamler – How (much) to intervene in a usability testing session (p. 163)
o Vora – Classifying user errors in human-computer interactive tasks (p. 183)
- There’s also a good overview chapter on testing in Galitz, W. O. (1996). Essential guide to user interface design: An introduction to GUI design principles and techniques. New York: Wiley and Sons. See Step 12, p. 591. I will put both the Branagan and the Galitz book on reserve in the iSchool IT lab by noon, Monday, March 1.
- I will also put on reserve a one-page “Declaration of Informed Consent” (just to show you what one looks like) and a three-page article on “Methods for successful ‘Thinking out loud’ procedures.”
White Paper Presentations
If you will, please hand me a hard copy of your white paper, on Thursday (March 4), and send a copy of any Powerpoint or other file you’ll be wanting to support your presentation to both me and Shannon () by, say, 5pm Wednesday. That way he and I can have them ready to go, and I can advertise to you all a “batting order” before you show up. (It might influence how much you have to eat in advance of class!)
Your Final Project
Three weeks after this Thursday (i.e., March 25th) you will be expected to turn in a test plan, detailing your final project. You can find a pretty good template for a test plan at the STC Usability SIG site (http://www.stcsig.org/usability/resources/toolkit/ut_plan.doc).
So, after this Thursday, start pairing up, and deciding what you want to do an evaluation of. I will NOT want you to do simply a heuristic evaluation (professional judgment review). Rather, I will want your evaluation to entail SOME user testing. Though, as I said in class, you are free to test just friends, or fellow classmates.
If you have something you’d like to test, go for it. Here is a list of local nonprofits’ websites that you might find worthy of your attention. In the past, students have shared their results with the nonprofit organization, and have actually influenced redesigns.
- http://www.austinhabitat.org/
- http://newlifetexas.org/ (in the interest of “full disclosure” I should tell you that my wife works for these folks)
- http://www.hillcountryride.org/site/PageServer
- http://www.abcaus.org/
Of course, feel free to pick any site you wish (almost!), or desktop application.
The Near Future
- March 4 – Your presentations. (You knew that!)
- March 11 – Visit to BMC Software, 10415 Morado Cir., at noon. Here’s a map. http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?address=10415%20Morado%20Circle%20&city=Austin&state=TX&county=Travis&country=US
- March 18 – Spring Break. This week I think you should be reading the following things:
o Nah, I was just kidding.
- March 25 – Back to our classroom, for a lecture/demo/exercise on discount usability engineering methods.
Class Mailing List
Shannon has set up a mailing list for our class, with the name i385prb.
Send an email to , and in the body of that email put the message
Subscribe i385prb FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
Of course, you’ll substitute your own first and last names for those all-caps variable names above.
The listserv people recommend that you go read the Do’s and Don’t’s at:
http://www.utexas.edu/its/mailinglists/answers/subscribing.html
You’ll receive a welcome note, including instruction on how to post an email to the whole list.
Interim Evaluation
At the end of the course you’ll have the opportunity to complete a course evaluation. This may help the NEXT group of students who take this class, but it doesn’t do you a bit of good! So I like to offer you the chance to offer me a little mid-course correction. NO GUARANTEE I can make the changes you request. But if there is some consensus in the responses, I will try to make the changes NOW, to maximize the benefit of this course to YOU.
Cut-and-paste the short questionnaire at the end of this email. Complete it and send it to me. If you wish anonymity, just print your completed form and put it in an envelope, in my mailbox in the iSchool office. Thanks.
All for now.
Randolph.
INF385P – Intro to Usability
Spring, 2004
Interim Course Evaluation
If you would like to try to affect some mid-course correction for the arc of this course, complete this and send it to me. Do it electronically () or if you would like to remain anonymous, just print it, fill it out (except for “name”) and put it in an envelope in my mailbox in the iSchool office. Thanks. Randolph.
Name (Optional): ______
Please circle one answer for each question, and offer comments as you see fit. Thanks.
So far this course is meeting my expectations.
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Comments:
So far this course is meeting my needs.
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Comments:
This is what I’d like MORE of, in this class:
This is what I’d like LESS of, in this class:
Here’s something else I’d like to say, that I haven’t had the chance to say, yet:
Thanks. Randolph.