This is part four in my series about the Human-Computer Interaction course I took through Coursera. Read all my posts for the full story.
An important part of this course is the peer review and self-evaluation process. If you take the process seriously you can learn a huge amount by evaluating the work of other students as well as your own work. Each assignment has a grading rubric to help you figure out what kind of feedback to give and how to score.
The peer review and self-evaluation process for Assignment 3 Wireframing also gave us a chance to practice a common UX technique: heuristic evaluations.
What are heuristic evaluations?
Read More
Implied contracts Every user choice is an implied contract. Be mindful when offering them. Honor implied contracts.
- Kathy Bateman
Last year we decided to have a garage sale. Since I usually look in the online classifieds for our local paper when I want to shop at garage sales I decided to place an ad there for our sale.
Read More
Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
-- Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Recently I found myself searching for a new rubber stopper for a piggy bank. I needed a short and wide rubber stopper or cork. The hole in the piggy bank has to be big enough to get the coins out of the bank yet the stopper must be short enough to allow room for many coins to fit in the small bank.
Not knowing where to find an item with this shape I started by searching the websites of some big name hardware stores. My hope was to visually scan pictures of items until I saw what I wanted and then drive to that store to buy it.
Read More