The undergraduate course is a semester project designing and implemeting a web application. Your evaluations are to assist them. Early evaluation assignments supports their design by identifying users and their goals, performing a stakeholder analysis, describing potential users, and performing a task analysis. A later assignment is a heuristic evaluation on the group’s paper prototype. In the second half of the semester, while the undergraduate teams implement their applications, you will develop a usability test. During the second to last week of the semester, you and your development/undergraduate team will administer the usability test. The final evaluation assignments are a presentation of the usability results to the class and scientists/clients and writing a usability test report.
It is important that you complete your evaluations by the due date because the development/undergraduate teams will need them to refine their designs and continue with their design process. Upload the documents to your directory, post them on your website and email the team the link to your evaluations.
Communicating with Undergraduate Teams
You should contact the development/undergraduate team before each evaluation assignment to introduce yourself and make arrangements to meet with them. The development/undergraduate teams should have a team email address posted on their website that you can use it to contact them. The undergraduate team should reply in 24 hours. You will have time during class to meet with your development/undergraduate team, but it may not be sufficient time to do all the work.
When you send an email to the undergraduate group, the email subject line should be
cs5760 – <grad name> – <subject>
where <grad name> is the your name and <subject> is the standard subject line. The subject line is to assure that the group recognizes your email as course correspondence.
When you have finished your evaluations, post them on your website, and email the undergraduate group the links to your evaluations.
Meeting with Sponsoring Scientists
The evaluation assignments require that you understand the app and the context of the app that the development/undergraduate team is developing. You will need to attend meetings with the scientist sponsoring the app when the team meets with the scientist/client. It is not sufficient that you learn about scientists requirement from the team. They may not remember all the details of the meeting or misunderstand.
You should not run the meeting with the scientist/client. Let the team run the meeting. This is an opportunity for the undergraduate students to learn to gather requirements from a client. You may ask the scientist questions.