Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

• Evaluate the design and deployment of a user-centered system

Scenario

You are a usability analyst at A&D University. The university is considering three vendors to provide laptops to campus students. University officials want to ensure that the vendor sites are easy to use for students who want to purchase a laptop. The intent is to evaluate the sites (linked below) where laptops can be purchased to determine whether the university should adopt the vendor and to provide feedback to the vendor concerning issues with the design of the website.

You have been tasked with completing a heuristic review and then creating a user test plan for testing across the different websites. While you will not be completing this test with multiple users, you will need to conduct a test with one user to ensure that content is clear. To do this, you will need to recruit one volunteer to participate in the user test, so plan accordingly.

Directions

Choose one of the following sites.

https://www.newegg.com/

https://www.bestbuy.com/

Y

ou have been asked to complete the tasks/subtasks a student would need to complete in order to select laptops available on the site and compare them. Focus on the following criteria:

• Software that comes with the computer
• Size of the screens
• Amount of storage on the computer

Conduct a heuristic review of each step you take to complete the task of comparing laptops, using the Set of Heuristics document provided in the Supporting Materials section.

Document the heuristic that were encountered within the task/subtask. Your documentation should include a description of how the heuristic were effectively implemented or violated during a specific subtask. Use the Heuristic Review Template provided in the Supporting Materials section to record this information.

Within the Heuristic Review Template, provide recommendations that could remedy heuristic violations or improve the design of the website. Justify your recommendations.

Develop a user test plan using the User Test Plan Template provided in the Supporting Materials section. Within your plan, address the following:

• Do the users need help from the online help system?
• Are they able to get the help they need?
• Are they able to complete the task without help?
• Are the users unable to complete the task?
• How long does it take the user to complete the task?
• What was the user satisfaction rating for the task?

You would now like to do some user testing on the same website that you used for your heuristic review. Even though the site has not been fixed at this point, you need to recruit a friend or family member to test the user test plan.

Conduct a user test using the user test plan you developed. You are trying to determine whether the tasks you are asking the subject to do are clearly stated. Within the user test plan, you will document the following:

• When the subject starts the task and when they finish the task. You should time your subject.
• When and what help is needed by the subject. Note when they use the help provided by the online help system. If they want to use the chat facility or call a help-line number, you should have a number of canned help messages you determined within the evaluation plan so that all subjects can be given the same information.
• The way the subject has attempted the task so that the results from multiple subjects could be analyzed.
• A completed user satisfaction questionnaire (https://garyperlman.com/quest/quest.cgi?form=QUIS

Evaluate the results of the user test to inform possible changes to the user test plan. Within the User Test Plan Template, write a brief summary of your user test. Consider the following:

• What worked well
• What didn’t work
• What you would change before presenting the user test plan to additional users

What to Submit

To complete this project, you must submit the following:

Heuristic Review Template
Within the template, you will include a description of how the heuristics were effectively implemented or violated during a specific subtask and provide recommendations that remedy the heuristic violations.

User Test Plan Template in Usability Testing document
The completed user test plan template, which includes a summary of the user test.