CPE/CSC 581-S07 Usability and Knowledge Management Assignment 4: Knowledge Usability

Note: Due to time constraints, you can choose to do either Assignment 3, or Assignment 4. The grading will be adjusted so that three assignments instead of four are sufficient to get the full score in the assignment portion.

Your task in this assignment is to examine usability evaluation methods, in particular heuristic evaluations, with respect to their applicability to knowledge management systems and tasks.

This assignment can be performed individually or in your project team.

Typically, usability evaluation methods are intended for generic systems and applications, or for applications using a specific technology or environment, such as the World Wide Web. While this does not preclude their use for knowledge-intensive tasks, it is my impression that most of them concentrate on interaction and presentation aspects.

Applied to search engines, for example, the clear and minimalist design of Google may have been a positive factor, but without delivering superior results, Google might not occupy the undisputed top ranking in search engines right now.

Another example of knowledge usability for me is the difference between a library system such as PolyCat, and online article repositories like CiteSeer http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/, or now Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/. Library systems typically provide access to different individual repositories, often arranged by domains. By now, usually there is a unified front end for searching multiple repositories, but to a user, it quickly becomes evident that there are separate systems underneath. This structure makes it very difficult to offer integrated services, such as related articles, or the ability to follow links to the sources cited in a paper.

As a starting point, you should identify a domain, task or system that requires intensive knowledge-centric interaction between the user and a computer. You can review the list of methods from a related CSC 484 assignment (see below), and identify an evaluation method that seems reasonably suited for your purpose. If you feel that the method is satisfactory, perform the usability review, and discuss how it addresses the specific knowledge management aspects we discuss in class. You can also revise the method, or develop a new one that works better for your purpose.

• "Interaction Design" Textbook Chapters 10-14
• "Resonant Interface" preprint Chapter 8
• Chapter 8 of User-Centered Website Development by McCracken & Wolfe
• Chapters 24, 25 and 33 of Human-Computer Interaction by Preece et al.
• Readings on Guidelines and Principles:
  • Ben Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface
    • Chapter 1 - Guidelines documents bibliography
    • Chapter 2 - Principles, Golden Rules and Guidelines
• http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/
• Website Usability Evaluation:
  • http://webtango.ischool.washington.edu/
  • http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/tech.html
  • http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebSAT/websat_rules.html
  • http://www.waller.co.uk/eval.htm
• Heuristic Evaluation:
  • http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/
• examples of good/bad interfaces:
  • http://www.baddesigns.com/index.shtml
  • http://pixelcentric.net/x-shame/
  • http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/shame.htm
  • http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/mfame.htm
  • http://www.commarts.com/interactive/index.html
  • http://useit.com
  • http://askTog.com

Grading Guidelines

This paper contributes up to 25 points to the overall assignments score. The score will be determined by the following criteria:

• complexity of the domains and knowledge-intensive tasks involved,
• discussion of an existing usability evaluation method (identification of strenghts and weaknesses; overall suitability for the purpose),
• degree of modifications to an existing evaulation method (ranging from no modifications to the formulation of a novel method)
• quality of the usability evaluation based on the selected or proposed method
• presentation (is the appearence of the material of professional quality, e.g. without spelling or grammatical errors).

Submission

The deadline for this assignment is two weeks after the distribution. It should be submitted via the Blackboard "Discussion Forum" feature; I will set up a discussion forum for it. You should format your document as an XML or HTML file so that it can be used in a larger context, and viewed easily from within BlackBoard. If you use MS Word or a similar program, please convert it to HTML.