Lecture/ Tutorial/ Reflection

Evaluation of Usability

This week's lecture was based on Evaluation of Usability. The lecturer told us when designing or developing something new, we should think in a context of user. As he gave couple of examples, i.e. Watch, Baton and my favorite one Shoe, it is light and it should be water proof thanks to the climate in U.K. and the most unnoticeable thing is that we are still using the 4,000 year old technology which is shoe laces. The Lecturer continued his lecture explaining:

• Evaluation and its usability


• How do users perform tasks


• Comparing Designs
  
• Predict Usability of System


• Qualitative Evaluation


• Inspection


• Users Performance

He explained his point saying when designing you should evaluate who are the users going to be, keep the instructions simple and in which environment is the design going to be used. For e.g. a Ticket machine on a Train station which is used by many different aged people and that its goes through different weather condition's as well.

FLASH

In today's Tutorial we were told that we will use Flash. We started off by selecting Action script 2, and then we followed the notes which were provided on blackboard. The task was to firstly select the background of the Page (Note: Pages in Flash are called Frames, but either way it is same) and then we have to write a Text on Frame 1 and add a button from window and then common library. Then we have to create a second Frame to that right click on film line and add key frame write a different text on frame two and add button again. Follow the same step to create more Frames, then test the movie but frame will run nonstop and you can see anything clearly. Then next step was to add the stop the auto play movie on frame. then finally we attach action script to the buttons, than we have tested the movie, and we repeated the same procedures to each frame, save it and test the movie again this time the users can control the movie.

REFLECTION

Lecture was the contiuation from preveiously taught Usability Intereaction to Evaluation of Usability, the main idea was to design in a context of a user, and that it should fulfill the desires of the users for example if you take a Game Part 1 and when you'll make Game Part 2 you will do a research what was lacking in the previous game and what new ideas could be added and how to improve the game over all. As per for the Tutorial this week was a change after going through the Checklist and Evaluation and Usability of Glamorgan websites in last two weeks. Flash is intresting as we learn how to link one frame to second frame and how to add actions script to buttons.

Two external links on Usability:

1) Google

2) University of Glamorgan