Assignment 8
Formal report of website evaluation
For this assignment you’ll need to read chapters 9, 10, and 20, along with other related materials, and you will probably need to review other parts of the textbook. You’ll be conducting testing on a Web site and writing a report about it, so the information about Web sites in chapter 22 and reports in 9-10 is all relevant. You should also refer to other sections of the textbook as needed, especially pages 566-570, where usability testing is described and defined.
Assignment 8 is the most heavily-weighted assignment in the course. You are expected to demonstrate your proficiency with usability testing, persuasion, document design, and writing style. You will be demonstrating your ability to document a research process in an IMRaD style report. You will cite the sources that you use, including the Web site you study, the textbook, and sources provided for you, using APA, IEEE, or another professional citation style.
1. Select either www.Omantourism.gov.om or http://ragbrai.com/.
2. Review the material about Web sites in chapter 22 and pages 566-570 so that you remember the most important standards and practices that the Web site designers should be observing. Usability testing is described in far more detail here. You can refer to this University of Texas document as a guideline as well.
3. Write a short test for the site. The test must make sense for your site: you can have people search for a specific article, a piece of information that should not be too difficult to find, or some other element. You can do read-and-locate test, an understandability test, or a performance test. In addition, memorability and error recovery are also testable. Each site has different testable aspects. You must understand the site well enough to write a test that reasonably determines how usable some aspect of the site is. For example, on the Oman site, you might test people’s ability to locate places on the interactive map. You might time people and see whether they got to the right location or found the correct information.
Be sure, as you develop the test, that you are testing the site, not the people.
You must find at least two adults who will take your test so that you have test results to report. If you are familiar with a “methods” section of a scientific report, this step is similar. Successful tests in the past have timed tasks that users complete with the site, given people scenarios for using the site and asked them to describe their experience as they play out the scenario, or tested accessibility of a site for people with disabilities. You should test for something along those lines.
4. Take careful notes as you plan and conduct the test – every step of the procedure needs to be documented, from the Browser you use to the observations you make. The “lab report” sample on pages 255-257 is very useful for modeling the kind of content and the formatting that is useful for this assignment. Your report will only be strong if you have actual test data that supports your recommendation.
5. Plan the document. In Chapter 18, you read about headings, subheads, and other design principles for documents. Review these and design an appropriate layout for your title page and report pages. Note that the title page, headers, table of contents, page numbers, and subheadings are all part of the grade. Do not use MS Word templates for design, but do use the automatically generated Table of Contents and program, don’t type, the page numbers into the document. The Table of Contents is in “References” and the page numbers are found in the “Insert” tab. Note page numbering in the example on page 286-297.
6. Draft the report by writing the major body sections in a logical order (such as introduction, methods, results, analysis, recommendations). You can start with an introduction or methods, and be sure to include your evaluation of accessibility and your recommendations for the Web site you have chosen. The audience for the report is the Web site designers and other interested parties. Save the first complete draft separately for submission with the final document. If desired, consult with me about suggested revisions before the report is due.
7. Format the final report; the report should mostly follow the pattern on page 286. Decide which results are most interesting and create a simple graphic (table, chart, or infographic) to present it. You do not need to have the abstract on the same page as the Table of Contents. You should not use MLA style references as the example does; use a style specific to your major, such as IEEE style. Your title page should include your name, not the name of the team as the example uses.
8. Edit the report and revise as necessary until the document meets requirements and is virtually error-free.
9. Submit your report to Discussions by July 2 for a critique.
10. Submit your revised report draft and final revision to Blackboard by the deadline. For full credit, the final needs to demonstrate significant revision and improvement from the draft. If you saved the body of the report when it was written, then as you add titles, graphics, headers, footers, page numbers, AND make the wording more concise, you will be demonstrating good distinction between draft and final. The final must be edited and well-designed.
