For this assignment, you will investigate the user needs of the application your team will be designing for the course. You may choose to further define what kinds of consumer services your application will present its users. However, more detailed requirements will come from your investigations using methods mostly presented in chapter 7 of the text.
As a team, decide what kinds of services your application will list. You may consider the applications you reviewed individually, but your final choice does not need to be related to those involved with the individual analysis. You should also consider whether you will have access to potential users so that you will be able to complete the projects for this class.
With a few sentences, present at a general level what your application will provide its users.
You should also describe the larger context in which your application will be used, possibly addressing the following questions:
You must prepare your interview in advance. Working either individually or as a team, the interview script should include the following:
We will discuss the contents of the interview script in class. You may also want to review section 13.2 in the text for some general guidelines and principles for conducting an interview. In addition to the script, you should consider how you selected and approached potential users for the interviews. Your method should select a good variety of participants. While your analysis will focus on users seeking consumer services, also consider the other stakeholders in the problem domain.
When you create your set of interview questions, consider the artifacts and tasks that exist in the problem domain. Plan on conducting a contextualized interview. The text presents an overview of the contextual interview in section 9.4.2, but class demonstrations will provide the most useful guidance. The context may involve one of the applications you analyzed for the individual assignment.
Keep the interview simple and focussed so that it lasts 15 to 30 minutes. Each individual should plan on interviewing three people, thus yielding 9 to 12 interviews for the whole group. Simply keeping notes is acceptable. If you choose to record the interview, make sure you have the participant's permission.
After the interviews, your team can start consolidating the results and placing them in the report. The following items correspond to the sections in your final report.
In a couple of paragraphs, present the general purpose of the application you will be designing including the types of services it will present and the context in which it will be used.
Present a list of the application's stakeholders, which are the groups of people that will be affected by your application. Briefly describe how your application affects them.
Identify common themes or features throughout the scenarios. Create requirements lists organized using these categories:
These categories are described in 7.3.1. The list of functional requirements should be the most developed. Only list usability requirements if any critical points are observed during the interview.
The appendix contains supporting information including the interview protocols and the methods for selecting participants. Also attach a copy of the individual notes from the interviews. The notes do not have to be created with a word processor.
Submit a softcopy through the dlweb site. Only one submission per team is needed and may be submitted under any one name. The report should include the names of all the team members and how they contributed to the assignment. Interview notes may be typed in or scanned.
I will use this grading sheet to help me review the project.