Final exam and Review

The final exam is a comprehensive, closed-notes, closed-book, individual-effort exam. It is worth 70 points (35% of the class grade). The format and style of the questions will be similar to those on the midterm quiz. These include multiple choice, short-answer (a phrase to a couple of sentences) and extended answer (a paragraph).

In-class students are expected to take the exam in-class Monday November 22 starting at 5:45, unless other arrangements have been made. Online students must register to take the exam at their convenience. An online student may opt to take the exam Monday evening with the in-class students. Everyone will be allowed up to 3 hours to take the exam.

In addition to the questions, a form will be provided for assessing the contribution of you and your team members throughout the course. Alternatively, you may complete the forms in advance and turn them in with the exam. Here's a link to the form. Your individual responses on this form will remain confidential.

Data Collection methods and their properties

We have covered a range of methods for collecting data on users and their tasks. Here is what you should know for each method:

• Brief definition of method
• Considerations for selecting method
• Expense, time or resources needed for method
• Potential difficulties in conducting the method
• Variants and strategies
• Informed consent issues

Here is a list of data collection methods discussed in class:

• Site observations
• Interviews
• Contextual inquiries
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• User shadowing
• Usage (e.g. web) logs and usage analytics
• Card sorting
• Diaries
• Advisory Boards
• Customer support logs

Analysis

Here are some strategies and concepts for organizing results:

• Clustering related responses
• Integrating common narratives
• Frequencies of response types, with standard errors (SEs) and confidence intervals (CIs)
• Means, standard deviation, SEs and CIs of continuous variables (e.g. time on task)
• Effects of sample size and variance on data reliability

Data presentation methods

For reports, we discussed the following approaches to presenting results of user research:

• Personas
• Usage scenarios
• Feature lists
• User/task matrices
• Tables and charts summarizing quantitative data

For data presentation methods, consider how and when these methods are effective. What components improve their effectiveness? Reflect on what you learned when reading other reports.