Assignment 3
This is the final version of Assignment 3.
Due to the practicalities of
limited amounts of time, assignments 1 & 2 only provided a limited
amount of insight into expert evaluation and user testing. They didn't
explore the differences that different developers bring to these
activities. They also didn't explore how much evaluation or testing
data should be obtained. In this assignment, teams of students compare
and present
what they learned from conducting Assignments 1 & 2.
Students will be placed in teams of approximately 5 persons per team.
This
is intended to be a short, quick assignment to gain these additional
insights. It is expected that the necessary work can easily be
accomplished during the week of Feb. 28 without the need of carying it
over into the break. The assignment is not due until Tues. Mar 13, to
give students Mon. Mar 12 to do any last minute work on it.
As stated in Assignment 2: Failure to
submit anything for Assignment 2 will also result in an automatic mark
of 0 on Assignment 3.
NOTE:
As long as you have completed assignments 1 and 2, you can use whatever
you submitted for those two assignments as the basis for this
assignment. You do not need to "improve" or "correct" any components of
those assignments for use in this assignment. The focus is on
understanding what you learned from those assignments about expert
evaluation and user testing.
Steps in completing this assignment:
- Meet with your team and plan your work
Teams will be created and announced by class time on Tues. Feb 28.
It is required that all students attend class on Tues. Feb 28 so that they can make initial contact with the members of their team.
NOTE
1: This assignment is a relatively short one - however to successfully
complete it requires cooperation and coordination between all members
of your team. If there are any problems with getting your team together
and working on this assignment, you should e-mail information on the
difficulties to the instructor as soon as possible.
NOTE
2: While your team is allowed to split up the work and while you will
be required to report on what work was done by each team member, ALL members of the team are responsible for ALL parts of this project.
The failure of one or more team members to do good work is not an
excuse for weak or missing parts of your assignment. While students
failing to do their share of the work will be penalized, the other
students will not be given higher marks than what is handed in is worth.
NOTE 3: If you have any specific questions about
this assignment, be sure to ask them as soon as possible.
- Get together as a team and compare the results from your Assignments 1 & 2, with particular emphasis on similarities and differences in:
- the principles that you used in Assignment 1
- the results for the different principles
- the results that you obtained in Assignment 2
- what you learned about expert evaluations
- what you learned about user testing
NOTE :
You will have to determine within your team which of these similarities
/ differences / items learned are important enough to report and which
are not.
NOTE: You need to identify and be able to discuss at least the five most important answers (findings) for each of these points.
- Prepare a report (no longer than 10 pages in length) that discusses your results from Step 2 and that contains:
- a
discussion of the principles that you used in Assignment 1 (including
such issues as discussions of which principles were easier/harder to
use and which provided more good/bad examples)
- the results for the different principles (including information on the types of insights obtained from the different principles)
- the results that you obtained in Assignment 2
- what you learned about expert evaluations
- what you learned about user testing
- A short description of what each team member contributed to this assignment.
NOTE:
There are no marks for part f.
of your report. However marks may be deducted based on it not being
provided and/or information provided in it. Information on the
contributions of individuals will
only be used to identify potential issues with members of the team. The
instructor may use this information as the basis for lowering the marks
of individuals who did not do their fair share.
A copy of this report must be submitted by each member of the team as their Assignment 3 submission by 12:00 noon Tuesday Mar 13- The report must identify the team number and the members of the team at the start of the report.
- All submissions from a given team must be identical so that only one copy of the report need be marked.
- If
a student wishes to submit anything in addition to the report, that
additional submission should be e-mailed to both the TA and the
instructor prior to the deadline for submitting Assignment 3
- Late assignments
will not be accepted.
- Assignments not
submitted before 12:00 noon EST on Tuesday Mar 13, 2012 will
automatically receive a mark of 0.
- If necessary it is better to submit an incomplete assignment than not to submit anything.
- Failure to
submit anything for Assignment 3 will also result in being taken out of your project team. for the Term project.
- Assignments must
be submitted as a single Word or pdf file.
- Prepare a 5 minute
PowerPoint presentation that summarizes your comparisons, you may have
1 slide to introduce your team and 1 slide for each of the comparisons
in point 1.
You must
ensure that the TA has a copy of your PowerPoint slides no later that
12:00 noon EST on Tuesday Mar 13, 2012. You should also have a copy of
your slides posted on a web site that you can quickly access that is
publicly available without the need to log into it.
NOTE:
The means of getting your slides to the TA will be determined by the
time when this assignment is made formal. However, it is your
responsibility to get them to the TA on time. Be prepared to make your
team presentation in class on Tuesday March 13 and if not chosen to do it
then to make in in class on Thursday March 15.
- Each
team will have only 7 minutes to make your presentation. It is up to
you to be sure to cover all five components within this time well
enough to impress the guest instructor who will be assigning you a
mark. Be sure to practice your timing ahead of time.
- All team members are required to be at the presentation, whether or not they actuall speak as a part of the presentation.
- It is up to the team which of its members make the presentation,
- i.e.
not all team members need to present, but all team members will receive
the team mark, unless some team member fails to show up for the
presentation.
NOTE
1: Teams will be chosen at random to present on one of these two
classes and need to be prepared to present when called upon.
NOTE 2: Teams must use the computer provided in the classroom and may not use their own computer to cotrol the presentation.
NOTE 3: Any time taken to connect to
your presentation will be taken away from your presentation time. There
is no excess of time for connecting to your presentation. It may be
useful to bring a back-up copy on a USB stick in case of difficulties.
Marking Structure
The following marking structure will be used:
- Report {maximum marks possible = 50,
distributed between 5 components}
- the principles that you used in Assignment 1
- the results for the different principles
- the results that you obtained in Assignment 2
- what you learned about expert evaluations
- what you learned about user testing
NOTE 1: For each of these components it is expected that you discuss at least five findings.
NOTE 2: The discussions of each individual finding will get {2 or 1 or 0 marks}
2 marks for very good to excellent quality work
1 mark for adequate quality work
0 marks for unacceptable quality work
NOTE
3: In each component the five highest marks for findings will be recorded (for a
maximum possible of 10 marks per component). Extra marks from findings in one
component will not transfer to other components.
- Presentation {maximum marks possible = 50, distributed between 5 components}
- the principles that you used in Assignment 1
- the results for the different principles
- the results that you obtained in Assignment 2
- what you learned about expert evaluations
- what you learned about user testing
NOTE 1:
marks for presentations will be assigned by a guest instructor, who
taught this course and evaluated student presentations last term, so
that the marking is consistent with the expectations in the Department
and the University.
NOTE 2: The marks for each component will be assigned out of a maximum of 10 possible marks.