Assessment

In teaching this unit, my objective is to get my students to really see, experience and believe that HCI matters, and that designers and developers don't necessarily know or predict what users will experience. So for me the most important thing to give my students is some experience of the reality check of real users. The unit assignment is designed to provide an experience involving real users, and my desire to do this drives the unit content, and the design of the unit assessment.

I ask students to carry out a usability evaluation process on two similar systems - that is, on two systems providing similar purpose and functionality. I ask them to choose two systems, because I think analysing two systems is in some ways easier than working with just one, giving different approaches to the solving the same problem, for example.

There are two stages to the evaluation process: first they must analyse the systems, in the role of HCI expert; and then they must design and implement a small-scale user study to investigate further some aspect which they have identified in their expert evaluation.

Students choose the systems they wish to evaluate, which may be almost any system, web-site, gizmo, etc. But each student must discuss and agree their choice with me. The main criterion I apply in approving their choices is whether thay can get access to an appropriate group of participants for the user study.

An additional benefit of insisting that all students must get my approval for their assignment subject is that it ensures that I have at least one individual discussion about the assignment with each student, in which I can explore the issues to be investigated, and the design of the user study.

This year most people chose web sites, but we also had game interfaces, other software systems, and some gizmos (mobile phones, game consoles). In previous years we've also had audio systems, such as voice-input cinema call systems.

I think it is important that students choose the system they study because:

• they can analyse systems which interest them, thus increasing their engagement in the task;
• they can choose things which are relevant to their particular degree programme, which also increases engagement;
• seeing their choices and interests is informative and interesting for me, and helps me to know them better.

The crucial element in this assignment is the user study. My whole approach to the course is designed to put the students into a situation where they will have the experience of observing and analysing people interacting with systems in a genuine, albeit small-scale, investigation. Students cannot pass the assignment without fulfilling this requirement.

I generally get very high levels of interest and engagement in this work, although the assignment is demanding.