EVALUATE: heuristic evaluation & personal plan IED (lesson 7)

Discussing Personal Plan for IED

11.00 Chris
11.15 Dewy
11.30 Jowently
11.45 Eyse
12.00 Sabrina
12.15 Mauro
12.30 Kenny
12.45 .........

Heuristic Evaluation

I use the Heuristic Evaluation to explore prototypes for usability problems that have not been discovered yet. Students form a small set of evaluators and they examine their prototypes individually, discuss their outcomes afterwards and rate each usability problem that they have found together.

How to conduct a heuristic evaluation (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J09MeSfOTJE
How to conduct a heuristic evaluation (article): https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/heuristic-evaluation-how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation

How to document your outcomes in a Heuristic Evaluation Matrix

Make a list of all problems that were found:

Connect these problems to the heuristics
Provide a rating to each problem: 1 = easy problem, easy to solve in this project 3 = average problem, solvable with some effort 5 = complex problem, not solvable in this project
Document all your outcomes in a Heuristic Evaluation Matrix, as displayed below.
Explain the outcomes in 150 words.

Setup Heuristic Evaluation

Take all heuristics (see A and B below) + think of 2 heuristics that are relevant for your project.
Make a selection of 10 heuristics that are relevant for your project at this moment.
Choose 3-4 evaluators and introduce them to your project. Explain that evaluators can rate the problems that occur (scaling 1-5) and show them how to document their results to you.
Set the time, 2-3 minutes per heuristic (10 x 2 minutes).
When finished with your prototype, discuss all results in the group of evaluators and rate the most complex and least complex problems.
Document all results, the ratings and draw conclusions. Define specific improvements that need to be made.

A. Heuristics for virtual reality applications

1. Natural engagement.

Interaction should approach the user’s expectation of interaction in the real world as far as possible. Ideally, the user should be unaware that the reality is virtual. Interpreting this heuristic will depend on the naturalness requirement and the user’s sense of presence and engagement.

2. Compatibility with the user’s task and domain.

The VE and behaviour of objects should correspond as closely as possible to the user’s expectation of real world objects; their behaviour; and affordances for task action.

3. Natural expression of action.

The representation of the self/presence in the VE should allow the user to act and explore in a natural manner and not restrict normalphysical actions. This design quality may be limited by the available devices. If haptic feedback is absent, natural expression inevitably suffers.

4. Close coordination of action and representation.

The representation of the self/presence and behaviour manifest in the VE should be faithful to the user’s actions. Response time between user movement and update of the VE display should be less than 200 ms to avoid motion sickness problems.

5. Realistic feedback.

The effect of the user’s actions on virtual world objects should be immediately visible and conform to the laws of physics and the user’s perceptual expectations.

6. Faithful viewpoints.

The visual representation of the virtual world should map to the user’s normal perception, and the viewpoint change by head movement should be rendered without delay.

The users should always be able to ﬁnd where they are in the VE and return to known, preset positions. Unnatural actions such asﬂy-through surfaces may help but these have to be judged in a trade-off with naturalness (see heuristics 1 and 2).

8. Clear entry and exit points.

The means of entering and exiting from a virtual world should be clearly communicated.

9. Consistent departures.

When design compromises are used they should be consistent and clearly marked, e.g. cross-modal substitution and power actions for navigation.

10. Support for learning.

Active objects should be cued and if necessary explain themselves to promote learning of VEs.

11. Clear turn-taking.

Where system initiative is used it should be clearly signalled and conventions established for turn-taking.

12. Sense of presence.

The user’s perception of engagement and being in a ‘real’ world should be as natural as possible.The principles of natural engagement, natural expression of action and sense of presence were motivated by questionnaire-based techniques for assessing