Assignment #6 - Cognitive Walk-through

Objectives

To be able to perform a usability analysis using the Cognitive Walk-through methodology

Assignment

Important - You will be doing a CW of other student projects (not your own). This means you will need to get the documentation from other students - which you will be able to obtain from the Assignment 5 Discussion Board. 

For this evaluation we are now going to move on to the use of a real application, but one that is in prototype mode. This evaluation will be of one of the student designs of the other students. These are the designs that were created in Lumzy (or other) and should be available to to you.

1. On the discussion board you need to obtain the URL of three different student projects. 

2. After identifying three separate projects - you will then document a specific task that will be performed with the user application (Task analysis). The task will be documented as a series of high level tasks that will be achieved with the system. 

These high level tasks give the user a purpose in the system and must be documented as part of the cognitive walk-through. The appropriateness of the task should be agreed upon by the designer and the evaluator. This can all be done on the discussion boards and students can share the information on tasks and evaluation of the tasks.

3. The cognitive walk-through follows each element of the task and the interface and answers the following questions (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_walkthrough );

• (Determine Action) Will the user try to achieve the effect that the subtask has? (example- Does the user understand that this sub-task is needed to reach the user's goal?)
• (Take Action) Will the user notice that the correct action is available? (example - is the button visible?)
• (Desired Result) Will the user understand that the wanted subtask can be achieved by the action? (example - the right button is visible but the user does not understand the text and will therefore not click on it.)
• (Correct Feedback) Does the user get appropriate feedback? Will the user know that they have done the right thing after performing the action?

4. So the CW document will have task actions and results of the 4 CW questions for each sub-task.

Document this as a word or pdf and include screen captures of the interface as documented and provided by the student who was the source of the design. You should as a courtesy provide the results of your CW to the student who provided you an interface design.

Information

Information on Cognitive Walk-through is available at the Topic - Usability Evaluation

In addition here is a little video (from Chris Kimmer) on performing a cognitive walkthrough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edqjao4mmxM 

Because you will be evaluating the documentation and prototype for other students it is highly possible the documentation may be lacking required information. You should get the contact information for the student or students that produced the prototype as you may need to ask questions to clarify the design.

Estimated Completion Time

This should take about 1-2 hours for each the three walk-through you are required to do.

Supporting Lectures 

The usability evaluations are covered in the lectures All Course Lectures

Questions and Answers

External Resources

Here is an excellent example of a CW format that works quite well - http://www.carincamen.com/img/hci/cognitive02.png 

Grading Criteria

A good walk-through is worth 4 points each, up to 10 points.