Tutorial 1  Week 2

A. Practical Exercises

Activity One - Good and Bad Design:

Website:

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479

The feature in which I think exhibits good design is the ‘Breadcrumb’ component of the site. The reason for this as it allows the user to see their navigation progress into the site, the levels/pages that they have navigated too to reach the current content in which they are currently looking upon. This feature also has the benefit of the user not having to click back to go to a previous page, it allows them to jump directly back to a desired page. 

Website:

http://mnatwork.com/

This site has exhibits poor design when it comes to site navigation. The navigation is explained at the beginning after the site is loaded and then you are only presented with “Draw and Discover”, which I feel leaves the user a little be mystified with what they should do, so the navigation is almost a mystery.  I had a go at the navigation to open up their project page, and I was then again presented with again another mystery navigation. Then when I wanted to navigate away I had forgotten the navigation methods, which made me want to stop navigating and leave the site.

Response to Post

Good Design and Bad Design – Rebecca Keirs

Hey Rebecca, I agree with your comment about Hotmail, the one with ANZ though... I don't know. ANZ is a large corporation and has a lot of information to provide. They do have a lot of links, and what they have done to make it easier to navigate is to group similar links together, for example they have the tabs up at the top, each holding links relevant to the type of customer who has reached the site, making it easier to go to your section. If they reduced the amount of links and made it more high level links, there would be a higher click count for an action to be completed, which would make the customer even unhappy.

Cheers,

Rhys

Examples of Good and Bad Design – Ghanav Vijan

Hey Ghanav,

Angelfire yeah it is a bad site!

Nokia hmmmmm.... I almost agree with you, but...

When you just type in nokia.com and land at their international landing page you are presented with a big picture banner and then down at the bottom in normal size text the region you are from. I had to look around for a split second because I went 'now what?'. What I thought they could of done and what I have seen done before, is in that space where picture banner they have a map of the world and you click on your region from there.

Just an idea.

Cheers,

Rhys

Activity Two - Your Own Site:

B. Independent Exercises

Activity 3: Assignment 

Pick the most important HCI goals as they apply to each of the following types of applications:

·        Air-traffic control

- Safety, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Usability

·        Ticket-booking software for travel agents

- Efficiency, Usability, Utility, Effectiveness

·        Reservation software for airline agents at the luggage check-in counter

- Efficiency, Usability, Utility, Effectiveness

·        Flight simulators to train airline pilots

- Effectiveness, Utility, Usability

·        An adoption of flight simulator as a video game for home user

- Appeal, Usability, Utility

 
This question will help you start building your set of persuasion tools for when you encounter
managers or programmers who are unsure about the value of user-centered development. Using
your internet skills, find a news item of a story occurring within the past year that described the
usability issue that caused problems. This should be a usability problem with the system’s interface,
not a problem with back-end functionality, such as a server crash, or an infrastructure problem, such
as not having enough delivery personnel on hand for the holiday rush.

a) Write a two or three sentence summary of the problem and its aftermath

Google released its new social networking software called Google Buzz. The problem with it was not only privacy issues but the way in which it interacted with the user. The article states that Google pushed the software to their user base before they polished off the usability aspects of the software. This lead the software to be clunky and not that pleasant to use, leaving the user frustrated and resorting them to abandon the software. The aftermath of these usability issues has left the software being tarnished and left alone by Googles user base.

b ) List the URL, and include a printout of the story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030100008.html

Why Google Pushed Buzz Out The Door Before It Was Ready

Erick Schonfeld

TechCrunch.com
Sunday, February 28, 2010; 6:55 PM

When  Google Buzz launched three weeks ago, the product wasn't ready. There were basic privacy issues that still needed to be hammered out (and were quickly addressed by Google), but beyond that Google Buzz simply did not work smoothly enough to force feed it to 175 million Gmail users without any warning. (MG covered some of the usability issues last week).So why was Google Buzz pushed out the door too soon? I have three interrelated theories:Google still wants to buy  Twitter, and putting Buzz into Gmail might be enough of a threat to bring Twitter back to the table. Buzz did not launch in some Google Labs backwater. It is placed front and center in Gmail. Buzz is Google's strongest effort yet to enter the stream. If Buzz can gain traction it would certainly help Google's negotiating position with Twitter.Independent of any pressure it may place on Twitter, Google needs to have its own realtime micro-messaging communications system. The micro-message bus is just a more efficient way to communicate than email for many types of messages so it makes sense to add it as a layer to Gmail: broadcast your public messages via Buzz, and keep private ones on email or chat, all from the same place.The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites. Part of Google's prowess stems from the fact that it is the largest referrer of traffic to many other Websites. It doesn't want to lose that status to social sharing streams such as Facebook or Twitter. Already, Buzz is helping to boost sharing through Google Reader. While Google doesn't benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results.Google needed to get into this game as fast as it could, even if there were bumps along the way. The question now is whether Buzz can keep building.Photo credit: Flickr/ChelseagirlCrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzTwitterInformation provided by CrunchBase

c) The problem you cite should involve a computer in someway. Software and websites are good examples.

Yes - Software