Exam 2, CS 3205, Spring 2017

Details:

• Exam 2 will be given in class on Thursday, April. 13
• It will be designed to be a 75 minute exam, closed book and no notes.
• Students who have registered with SDAC to take the exam under different circumstances should contact me to make arrangements by noon, Monday, April 10/
• Important: If an emergency causes you to unexpectedly miss the exam or to be late, contact the instructor by phone or email immediately or as soon as possible! Do not delay!

Important: As noted early in the class, part of your score will be based on how well you express your answers using the vocabulary and terminology as defined in HCI. For example, you may identify and describe a usability problem but not in the way that someone trained in HCI would talk about it -- you will not get full credit in this case.

Readings from the ID-book textbook (in the order studied in class):

• Ch. 2 in published ID-book.
  
• Ch. 11 in published ID-book, “Design, Prototyping, and Construction.”  (Ch. 10 in our eBook)
• Ch. 13 in published ID-book, “Introducing Evaluation.”  (Ch. 12 in our eBook)
• Not covered in class, but read on your own for the exam:
  Chapter 12 in published ID-Book, "Interaction Design in Practice.  (Ch. 11 in our eBook.)
  

• Paper: “Supporting Elementary-Age Children’s Searching and Browsing”
  http://hcil2.cs.umd.edu/trs/2008-31/2008-31.pdf
  You do not have to read the section "Results: Simple Study" which starts on page 18 and ends on page 29; this is a detailed statistical analysis that's beyond what we expect in this course.  But do read the sections following that. One goal for reading this paper is to see a good example of how an evaluation study is carried out.

• Mental and Conceptual Models, cs3205-6-conc-mental-models-s17.pdf
• Prototyping Part 1, cs3205-7-prototyping-s17.pdf
• Prototyping Part 2, cs3205-8-prototyping2-s17.pdf
• Prototyping Part 3, cs3205-9-prototyping3-s17.pdf
• Intro. to Evaluation, cs3205-10-evaluation-intro-s17.pdf
• More on Evaluation, cs3205-11-evaluation-intro-part2-s17.pdf
  
  

Topic Summary:

• Readings: ID Book, Chap. 2.
• Slide sets: cs3205-3-conc-mental-models.pdf
• Conceptual models: how users understand all or part of a system. What one might be based on. Mental models.
• The four types of conceptual models based on activities.
• Examples covered in the slides and class.
• Why some conceptual models or metaphors support certain usability goals, why they might fail or not fit certain users as well.
• Metaphors as more specific (or fine-grained) components in a user interface. Examples discussed in class. Why some fail.
• Interaction mode or style.

• General concepts, characteristics, purpose, roles, types
• Using prototypes in a ID process
• Over time in process: number of prototypes, amount of work (or fidelity or detail) in a given prototype
• Prototyping techniques:
• Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity
• Parallel prototyping: why quantity etc matters more than serial refinement; functional fixation;
• Particular techniques: story-boarding; video prototyping; paper-prototyping; wire-frames; UI flow diagrams (web site-maps); hi-fi mockups; wizard-of-Oz.  (Nothing on content diagrams)
• For these, know what they are, strengths, role, limitations

• Lots of terms and definitions -- see slides
• User evaluation technique (13.3.1 in book, described in slides)
• Roles of people involved
• General steps involved in carrying out a single session
• Think-aloud protocol AKA cooperative evaluation technique; what the facilitator and participant do.
• Task descriptions
• Role of video, other observations
• General ideas of industry use of usability labs
• Analysis of usability defects
• Informed consent and participant rights
• Experimental design and usability:  good research questions; independent/dependent variables;
• Pitfalls and how to avoid them