CAP 4104 Human and Technology Interaction

Assignment 1

The purpose of this assignment is to provide students with experience in performing a guided expert evaluation of the usability of an existing system.

Students will select an e-Commerce Web site and evaluate it based on the principles contained in Chapter 4 of the class text.

Steps in completing this assignment:

  1. Identify a suitably complex e-Commerce web site that sells a variety of products.
    1. Check that it has not already been listed in the list of approved Web sites for use by another student. 
    2. E-mail a request to use this web site to the instructor: carter @ cs . usask . ca
      1. Make sure that your request has as its subject: CAP 4104 Web site claim request.
      2. Make sure to both name and provide a link to the site.
      3. Make sure to include your name with your request.
    3. Check to see that the instructor has approved your use of the site. 
      1. Approved requests will be posted in the list of  approved Web sites.
      2. The instructor will attempt to provide feedback on web pages that are not approved as soon as possible.

NOTE 1: it is good to get started on selecting a site as soon as possible.

NOTE 2: amazon.com and ebay.com are not eligible for being selected.

NOTE 3: be sure to consider how well a site will work for doing this assignment. I.e. you want a site that has both good and bad elements in its design and that is complicated enough to identify a number of different good and bad elements.

 

  1. Apply the principles from Chapter 4.3 of the class text to identify examples of where they have been successfully applied and where they might suggest opportunities for improvements.
    1. You must have a minimum of 20 examples in total, 
      1. 10 examples of good applications of principles
      2. 10 examples of bad applications of 

NOTE 1: each example must be significantly different from the others. Examples that are deemed to be redundant will not receive marks.

NOTE 2: If you include additional ones, you will receive marks for the best examples, provided that they meet the remaining criteria (below).

    1. You must use at least 5 of the 11 principles from Chapter 4.3, and each principle must have a minimum of 2 examples to be counted as being used.
  1. Develop a well-structured and well-written report (in a Word (.doc or .docx) or pdf format) or of your evaluation. Each example needs to include:
    1. identification and explanation of the example
      1. an identification number of each example (that can be used by the marker to refer to examples in your assignment)
      2. a short descriptive name for the example
      3. the url of the page that contains the example
      4. a short description of the what was found on the page (with a screen capture where needed to understand what was found in any page that was dynamically created and that might not be able to be revisited)
    2. discussion of the principle it relates to (see text chapter 4.3)
      1. identification of principle that it is a good or bad example of and whether it is a good or bad example
      2. a short discussion of either:
        1. for good examples: why it is an example of the principle being successfully applied
        2. for bad examples: what improvement the principle suggests should be made
    3. evaluation of the significance of this example (see text chapter 4.4.1.2) 
      1. your rating of how good or bad an example it is 
      2. a brief discussion of why you would give it this rating
  1. Submit your assignment electronically via WebCourses by 12:00 noon on Monday Feb. 6.
    1. Late assignments will not be accepted.
    2. Assignments not submitted before 12:00 noon EST on Monday Feb 6, 2012 will automatically receive a mark of 0.
    3. Assignments must be submitted as a single Word or pdf file.

NOTE: Do not leave this too long and do not expect any extensions. If necessary it is better to submit an incomplete assignment than not to submit anything.

Marking Structure

20 distinct examples are required.
For each example the following marking will be used:
NOTE: The following constraints will be placed on the marks: