HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION (UG), 2017-18
ASSIGNMENT 4: EVALUATION PROJECT AND REPORT, University of Sussex

INSTRUCTIONS
For this assignment, you should carry out an evaluation of an existing multi-player smartphone game. You can choose any  game you like, running on any smartphone platform(s), as long as the game requires more than one person to play it at the same time (either playing remotely, or physically co-located). The overall objective of the evaluation is to come up with recommendations on how to improve/enhance people’s experiences when playing the game. You might want to think about improving the way people interact with their smartphone when playing the game and/or interacting with the game content, in a stable or varying use context. The evaluation will involve collecting data, drawing up guidelines for design improvements based on your findings, and submitting a report which summarises your research process and results. The aim of this assignment is for you to demonstrate a good understanding and practical application of one or more of the evaluation methods covered in the module. You should recruit participants from your family and friends, and/or use inspection methods with you acting as the expert.

Evaluation should focus on:

• a multi-player smartphone game
• specific usability factors
• specific user experience factors

PROJECT TASKS AND METHODS
Key project tasks:

• Specify the evaluation problem by clearly defining the question (or questions) and objectives
• Decide and justify which usability and/or user experience aspects you will evaluate
• Choose evaluation method(s) appropriate for your evaluation project and justify the choice of method or  combination of methods, keeping in mind triangulation of methods
• Carry out the evaluation and collect data
• Analyse the data collected and highlight the key implications for design (or re-design)
• Write your report based on the previous steps (max 2500 words, not including appendices)

Potentially appropriate methods (but be sure you pick one that matches your focus):

• Interviews
• Experience Sampling Method 
• Observation, potentially including think aloud
• Expert/inspection methods

PROJECT REPORT
Reports must include:

• Introduction & Background (explanation of evaluation problem)
• Evaluation approach (method used, procedure and materials, analysis)
• Findings & Discussion (explain the findings and key implications for design)
• Conclusions (limitations and future work)
• References (sources used)
• Appendices (optional, but can be used to include the information/consent form if required, any materials used in the evaluation, and/or raw data where appropriate)

Section 1 Preview (GRADE: 2.1)

1.0.        Introduction

This report mainly focuses on analysing the user experience, and the interface design of the multi-user iPhone game named ‘Snake & Ladder Run’. The analysis was performed against the usability goals, user experience goal, and Donald Norman’s design principles (Norman, 1983). Additionally, the appropriate recommendations are provided to the interface design of the system to improve the user experience of the game.

1.1.           Overview of usability goals

The most important usability goals that can be measured are effective to use, efficient to use, safe to use, has good utility, easy to learn and easy to remember how to use. The brief explanation about the usability goals identified are provided in table 1.

Table 1: Explanation of the usability goals (Butler, 1985)

1.2.           Overview of the user experience goal

The most important user experience goals are satisfying, enjoyable, engaging, exciting, entertaining, rewarding, fulfilling, memorable, challenging, relaxing, comforting and fun. The brief explanation about the user experience goals identified are provided in table 2.

Table 2: Explanation of user experience goal (Kaasinen et al., 2015)

1.3.           Overview of the Donald Norman’s design principles

The Donald Norman’s design principles are visibility, feedback, constraints, mapping, consistency and affordability. The explanation of the Donald Norman’s design principles is provided in table 3.

Table 3: Explanation of Donald Norman’s design principles

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Last updated: Oct 04, 2019 03:21 AM