Assignment:
Your objective in this question is to show you can define usability and user experience goals and transform these and other design principles into specific questions to help evaluate an interactive product.
Find an everyday handheld device, e.g. remote control, digital camera, smartphone, and examine how it has been designed, paying particular attention to how the user is meant to interact with it.
- From your first impressions, write down what first comes to mind as to what is good and bad about the way the device works.
- Give a description of the user experience resulting from interacting with it.
- Based on your reading of this chapter and any other material you have come across, compile a set of usability and user experience goals that you think will be most relevant in evaluating the device. Decide which are the most important ones and explain why.
- Translate each of your sets of usability and user experience goals into two or three specific questions. Then use them to assess how well your device fares.
- Repeat (c) and (d) but this time using the design principles outlined in the chapter.
- Finally, discuss possible improvements to the interface based on the answers obtained for (d) and (e).