Site redesign

Summary: Propose and informally evaluate a redesign of your web site based on your findings from your evaluation of the existing site.

Collaboration: Each group will submit one report. You may discuss your design with anyone you like, but the design and writing should be your own.

Due: Thursday, May 1, 5 p.m.

Assignment

You now know some of the usability issues with your project web site.  (You may know about some functionality gaps as well.) In this part of the project, you will address those issues by proposing a new or modified design for the site.

Designing the prototype

Depending on the nature of the problems you found, the site, and your skills, you may:

• construct a paper prototype,
• develop a hi-fi mockup using HTML or Excel,
• or build a modified version of the site itself.

If you choose to develop an HTML mockup, you may be interested in Kompozer, a free DreamWeaver alternative.

In addition to these prototyping methods, you may wish to use web design heuristics, guidelines, or patterns to help interpret the usability issues and guide your redesign.

Evaluating the redesign

I do not expect you to evaluate your redesign as extensively as the existing site, but I would like to see some iterative design with evaluation involving at least 2-3 users. You may:

• call on people who volunteered to participate in your evaluation study but did not actually participate,
• call back earlier participants who expressed further interest, or
• trade sessions with members of the class.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. 

As with Investigation 6, you may make changes after each participant in response to obvious usability problems.

Reporting your work

As with Investigation 6, I want to see a walkthrough of your site, including photos or screenshots of the interface and captions explaining what is happening. I will try to make my digital camera and an appropriate USB cable available in my research lab on Wednesday and Thursday. You can also use the scanner in the 3rd floor printer room (SCI 3810), which is connected to the MathLAN.

Your report should have roughly the following structure:

• Introduction: Describe the site studied and give a brief overview of the major problems your redesign is intended to address. (This should be very similar to the introduction to the usability report.)
• Method and participants: Explain the method used to construct and evaluate the prototype, and who participated in its evaluation (remembering to protect confidentiality). This should be understandable at a high level by someone who is not familiar with the method.
• Walkthrough: Present your redesign in images and corresponding text.
• Design rationale: Explain what you changed from the original site to your redesign, and why. What problem did each major change respond to?
• Conclusion: What next steps would you undertake if you were to continue the project? What major issues are still to be addressed?

Turning in your work

Assessment

The report is worth 40 points towards your project grade.  I will assess your report on the following issues:

• Is it clear and readable?
• Does it completely address the issues above?
• How well does the redesign (and the prototyping method you chose) address the usability problems you found in the evaluation phase?
• To what extent did you use an iterative process? (Brownie points for additional participants.) Are the next steps appropriate?

Janet Davis (davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu)