Assignment 1: Usability Breakdown

Due date: Thursday September 28 or Friday September 29, in section

To do

• Read Donald Norman, Chapter 1, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things, 1-33 in The Design of Everyday Things, 1988). [click here]
• Read Interaction Design Sections 6.1-6.3.
• Create a poster discussing a usability breakdown, and bring it to your section meeting

This is an exercise in identifying usability issues associated in an interface with which you are familiar. You will put your results in the form of a poster to discuss in section. Start by thinking of some interactive interfaces with which you have experienced some kind of usability breakdown due to design that does not make good use of the principles in the readings:

• Visibility
• Natural mapping
• Constraint
• Feedback
• Conceptual Model (connecting the design model, the system image, and the user's model)

Appropriate interfaces can be a workstation application, such as a word processor or spreadsheet, an interactive web page, such as a registration page for some service, an information appliance, such as a VCR, alarm clock, or microwave oven controller, or anything else you can think of. Please do not use Norman's examples (door, stove, or telephone).

The problem should be one that comes up as a barrier to getting to do what you want, due to flaws in the design of the interaction (i.e., we are not interested in cases where the system crashed, or the device got broken). An example of a breakdown can be a situation where you did something that created a problem (e.g. unintentionally erased or destroyed something) or failed to be able to find the way to do something (e.g., set the clock on the VCR - but don't use that example since it so common).

After you have come up with a few possibilities, choose one to focus on.

Your deliverable will include the following:

• If the example is not likely to be familiar to everyone, give a few sentences describing what it does and what audience it is intended for.
• Give a few sentences (or "bullet points") characterizing the breakdown from the point of view of you as a user. Say briefly what you tried, what you expected, and what happened.
• Include some figures or illustrations that give substantive help to the reader in understanding the problem (not just pretty pictures).

In section you will be asked to discuss your example. This discussion should be included as a paragraph or two of text on your poster:

1. Characterize as clearly as you can the general issue that was at the root of the problem. This shouldn't be overly vague and general ("The interface is badly designed") nor just a repetition of the breakdown description. Look for a level of description that could apply to a family of breakdowns of which your case was an example. Use whichever of Norman's principles are relevant to characterize the problem.
2. Give an example of something with similar functionality that avoids the breakdown by better interaction design, or design one yourself. This can be a different part of the same system, a competitor, or a short account of what you would do to fix the problem and how your solution is better grounded in general principles.

Create your poster at any size you feel comfortable, using any image- or poster-creating software. A few good options are creating a large PowerPoint slide (use File...Page Setup to change the slide size), or using Word, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. Or use good-old-fashioned real cut and paste.

Above all, work for clarity and communication.

Grading Rubric (out of 10 points):

• Clear identification and explanation of the problem (2 points)
• Coherent discussion of which of Norman's principles the design violates, and how it does so (5 points)
• Identification of another design which avoids the breakdown, and a clear explanation of why it is better in terms of Norman's principles (3 points)