ICS 121 Software Engineering - Methods & Tools Spring 2000

Homework Assignment 3

Due: Friday, May 5, 2000, 11am

Cognitive Walkthrough

Description

The purpose of this assignment is to analyze a system interface from the perspective of a cognitive walkthrough, namely considering issues of users' tasks and experience and how that compares with actions in the interface. For the first part, you will analyze a current website (similar to Virtual Mall Online) by walking through a task. The second part of the assignment is to prototype mockups for a specific task of Virtual Mall Online.

Part I

Go to http://mall.esdmm.nl/ and perform a cognitive walkthrough of ESD's Virtual Shopping Mall to gain some understanding of what Virtual Mall Online might need. Remember to think critically. Pay special attention to and assess the features of each page as well as the overall site.

Specifically, perform the following task using the interface. Go to the Software Department.  Select two products from different categories in the "products" section within the Software Department (not from the "what's new", "popular products", or "today's hot deals").  Select one of the products after searching and the other product by browsing the categories.  Place both products on the same order. To finish product selection you will have to click on "Buy it Now", but stop here (unless you actually want to buy the products); this is as far as you need to go to complete this task for the purpose of this assignment. This will not actually place your order (rest assured, you won't have to pay for it).

For each action in the task, provide a screenshot followed by answers to the following questions:

  1. What is the user's goal - i.e., what action is the user trying to achieve at this point - and why?
  2. Is the desired action obviously available in the interface - i.e., were you easily able to find what you were looking for?  What, if any, other actions are available?
  3. Does the label for the desired action math the user's goal - i.e., do the links do what you would expect by the label? Why or Why not?
  4. If the user performs the desired action, what sort of feedback is provided? Is the feedback appropriate?  Why or why not?
In addition, summarize at least 5 suggestions you have for improving ESD's interface based on the results of your walkthrough. When you are critiquing, think about who are typical users of this website and that not all users are computer science majors.

Part II

Part I should give you some understanding on how to complete part II. For this part, you need to prototype mockup interfaces for a customer to make a purchase on Virtual Mall Online. This task includes

  1. product selection and order - a customer should be able to select multiple products for a single purchase
  2. providing the customer a total bill (including any additional charges)
  3. obtaining credit card information
  4. providing the customer a confirmation of the purchase(s)
For the mockup interface, you may use any tool you wish (such as an HTML editor, Netscape Communicator, Visual Basic or Visual Cafe), or you may just provide a neatly hand drawn sketch of the interface.  You do not need to worry about making a fancy opening web page for Virtual Shopping Mall (you can leave the bells and whistles to ICS 125).  You only need to develop simple pages that are visually appealing and easy to navigate and would get positive answers to the cognitive Wwlkthough questions above.  On the other hand, if you get into it and want to add animation, banners, advertisements, etc, by all means go for it and have fun.

In addition, summarize how you took the lessons from the cognitive walkthrough of ESD's Virtual Shopping Mall into account in prototyping the interface for Virtual Mall Online.

A Complete Homework will include:

Part I : One page for each screenshots (it should be on the order of 8-12 screenshots) in the correct order , the answers to the questions for each of the actions,and a one page summary of suggestions for improving the interface.

Part II: One page for each screenshot (on the order of 6-10 screenshots), and a page summarizing how you applied the lessons learned from the cognitive walkthrough.