Final Project Assignment

Your major project for this course is an applied piece of user experience research.

This may be:

• an investigation of user needs for a proposed software product, information system, web site, or similar; or
• an evaluation and assessment for a prototype or an existing system or service

The more real it is, the better the project. The best projects are for an actual client. But you can also pick a site or product with which you have no direct connection.

You must use a minimum of three substantive methods that we address in the course. (We’ll discuss this further.)

Given the constraints of the semester, this is likely to be more of a pilot project than an actual, completed project for a client. It’s most important that you get to practice a variety of methods and the entire process from planning to to analysis and delivery of a product. It’s unlikely that you’ll have time to go into enough depth with each method to have defendable results.

This can be an individual or a group project; group projects are recommended.

Due date: TBA. You will do a class presentation on your project at the end of the semester.

2010 Projects

Updated 3/29/10

Caring.com – Leslie Kernisan

BearMaps

Sean Carey
Daniel Chang
Ian McDowell
Kate Smith

City CarShare

Dan Byler
Kimra McPherson

Pawprint

Kevin Kuramura
Deerek Speer
Cameron Kinne

LBL programmable thermostats

Becky Hurwitz
Dhawal Mujamdar
Daniel Perry

Comparative Investigation of  Social Media Sites

Vidya Ramesh
Anjana Dasu
Alice Pang

bSpace

Alison Meier
David Rolnitzky
Thomas Schluchter

Brightstorm

Carlos Lievano
BingYune Chen
Jennifer Wang

Patient Self-Monitoring Device

Nikolai Kirienko

Sample usability reports

This page has links to dozens of reports!  To evaluate them, put yourself in the position of the client: does this tell you what you need to know?  Too little? Too much? Not the right info?  http://www.pdfgeni.com/book/usability-report-pdf.html Newer reports are much more sophisticated graphically (but sometimes to the detriment of the content).

From Usability.gov —  http://www.usability.gov/templates/index.html#Usability — their other templates are useful, too.

Test report templates for writing the usability test report.

• Research style usability test report template (DOC – 144KB)
• Short (informal) usability test report template (DOC – 216KB)
• Long (formal) usability test report template (DOC – 536KB)

Bolt | Peters:  Wikipedia study (includes links to highlight videos)

Random others that I’ve run across that are worth looking at:

Xbox 360 Usablility Evaluation Report (1996; shows its age but good format and presentation)

Drupal Usability Report (2008)

UC-eLinks Direct Linking Usability Report, UC-eLinks Project, Jane Lee et al. (2009)

This company goes for simplicity — perhaps too simple but clear, and good use of graphics.

• A Usability Study of Online Dating, Catalyst Group (2010)
• And another one from this same group: Bing v. Google

Sample Projects from Earlier Years

Fall 2008

Hesperian Voice – Simon Tan, Matt Gedigian, Alean Daniel

Popcuts Evaluation – Donna Leo, Jim Miller , Ben Cohen

Using Cellphones for Teaching English as a Second Language – Neha Kumar, Shanna-Shaye Forbes, Anuj Tewari , Jessica Vechakul

Kindle for Academic Reading – Baik Jin Young, Hyunwoo Park, Jessica Santana, Janani Vasudev

My Farm Website Usability Study – Julian Couhault, Zhengyu Tu, Nat Wharton

Flickr Needs Assessment – Nivay Anandarajah, Nicholas Galano,  Ruchi Kumar, Anuradha Roy

Fall 2006