Education Section > Usability & Website Design

LIS4277 - Usability Information Systems

Fall 2007

Instructor: Dr. Ian Douglas

This course taught me a lot about usability, user-centered design, and how to go through an entire design process. We had two projects in this course. The main project was to develop an interactive prototype for a mobile game day experience for FSU football fans. This assignment was more than just creating a website. In a group, we had to go through an entire design process. We had to do a brainstorming session, develop a paper prototype, create a report, present our work and showcase our final interactive prototype. A second assignment, which was completed individually, involved completing a heuristic analysis of the Florida State University’s library website.

For the main project, I was designated the leader of the group. I feel that this was the best group I had worked with, better than any other I had worked with in the others courses I took in the Information Technology major. I had the opportunity to lead other groups before this group, but I felt this group worked very well together. I learned a lot about myself and I learned that each person has a different working style. This was more evident in this group than any other group before. I had some members who needed detailed directions and others who just did their equal share of the work with very little instruction. It was really interesting to see how different work styles can come together to complete a project. For my portion of the project, I created and developed the actual prototype using CSS and XHTML. Our hard work paid off as we were selected by our instructor, Dr. Ian Douglas, as having the best prototype and the best report. This was a real honor for me and the group.

For the second assignment, I had to complete a heuristic evaluation of FSU’s library website. This assignment was part group work and part individual assignment. As a group we had to create a task for users to complete that would test the site. We tested ten users as a group. The heuristic evaluation itself was the individual part. In this assignment I had to compare and contrast FSU’s library website to University of Florida’s website. We tested the users, recording how long it took them to complete the task, how many clicks it took and how satisfied they were in completing the task. I then had to compare the results using usability guidelines and evaluate which site was more usable. In this assignment I learned a lot about user testing and writing tasks for a usability test. I also learned how to professionally evaluate a website using usability guidelines. These skills I learned in this class will help prepare me for a career in usability.

Skills Acquired

• User-Centered Design Guidelines
• Prototyping
• Heuristic Evaluations
• Usability Testing

Samples

• Interactive Prototype - This is the interactive prototype my group developed. I coded the site using XHTML and CSS, bringing to life the ideas created by the group. This website contains two pictures of cell phones. One is a smart phone and the other is a popular Motorola Razr. This site was just a page that allowed the group to emulate two phone sizes so we could showcase our prototype in its intended sizes.
  
  View the Interactive Prototype
  
  
• Heuristic Evaluation - This is the heuristic evaluation, or an analysis of a website based on usability and design guidelines. This is my analysis of Florida State's Library website. The results from the user testing were collected as a group, but the remainder of the document was written individually.

  Download the Heuristic Evaluation (PDF) - (307 KB)