1. Evaluation (cont.): Cognitive Walkthrough and Heuristic Evaluation
CS352

2. Announcements Notice upcoming events (web page).
Midterm: where to stop studying.
Team matters. Recall that:
Everyone does everything.
Specialties: make sure it’s done right.
Your grade depends on what your team thinks of your pulling your share.

3. Announcements (cont.) Design Gallery: Where we are in PRICPE:
Predispositions: Did this in Project Proposal.
RI: Research was studying users. Hopefully led to Insights.
CP: Concept and initial (very low-fi) Prototypes.
Evaluate throughout, repeat iteratively
Design Gallery:
where does that fit in?
what to do with what happened there?

4. Evaluation Analytical – based on your head Empirical – based on data
Formative
inFORMs design
what is (still) needed?
Summative
did it work?

5. Cognitive Walkthrough
“Walk through” the UI, asking yourself questions along the way.
Who does it:
1 or more usability experts. (3 is ideal)
How:
Identify characteristics of user and task.
Have on hand multiple copies of the Questions (next slide...)

6. Cognitive Walkthrough: How (cont.)
Walk through the task while answering these Questions:
Will the user know what to do and how? (Gulf of exec)
Will the user understand from feedback whether their action was correct? (Gulf of eval)

7. Cognitive Walkthrough: How (cont.)
Record the answers but also:
Assumptions about what would cause the problems and why.
Notes about side issues.
Notes about possible solutions.
Example for Amazon.com
p. 516 (3rd edition).

8. Cognitive Walkthrough: Activity
PSU has a “shared car” program:
Suppose a PSU student wants to consider whether to use it when she needs to shop.
Walk through the steps of this task:
Will s/he know what to do & how? (Gulf of exec)
Will s/he understand from feedback whether the action was correct? (Gulf of eval)
Notes: why, side-issues, ideas, ...

9. Analytical: Heuristic Evaluation
One of the “Discount usability” methods
Apply heuristic guidelines (eg: Nielsen’s) to a UI to find problems.
Who does it:
Multiple usability experts.
Example heuristics:
web design: Box 15.1 in Rogers pp
ambient displays: Rogers pp
Default: use Nielsen’s:

10. Heuristic Evaluation: How
Pick some usability guidelines, experts, task.
Brief experts on what tasks/portions to evaluate.
Experts indep’ly evaluate UI’s conformance with those guidelines for that task (1-2 hrs.)
Pass 1: flow.
Pass 2: focus on specific UI details.
Outcome: UI problems.
Experts meet to discuss problems, assign priorities, suggest solutions.

11. Heuristic Evaluation and HW #4
HW #4: do Heuristic Eval as follows:
Given:
a prototype (sketches) that UX experts previously found issues in,
a set of heuristics we send you.
(Part 1) individually turn in:
redesign (sketches) to eliminate the issues,
explanations of what you changed & why, using the heuristics we gave you.
(Part 2) work in a group of 3 to turn in a best/better redesign, starting with your 3 Part1’s.

12. HW #4 is also research
A student in this class (Zoe) is doing research related to Heuristic Evaluation.
You can “opt in” your HW #4 (Part 2), allowing it to be used as data.
I won’t know who opts in/out until after the end of the term.
If you opt in, your Part2 will get extra feedback from experienced UXers.
<Fill out forms if desired>

13. This slide is blank
Next term, I can bring back the activity that was here. Not needed this term, due to the in-class HW happening next week.