Usability Evaluation of Websites and Information Representations

Objectives

Usually representations are meant to be used by more people than just its creator(s), so we have to see how well they can be used in order to improve them. This is what usability evaluation is about.

In this module we want to get a theoretical and practical taste of evaluation, an otherwise wast field of knowledge, having as major branches psychology, human-computer interaction, survey theory, statistics, etc. See the few bibliographic links as starting points for further foraging.

The module is largely devoted to website usability evaluation. The reason is practical, since many of you will participate in the design or criticism of websites, an ubiquitous information representation. Websites are also a topic less covered in the rest of this class. Finally, we already had sessions of critical assessment of representations and saw sufficient technical know-how topics to not need to repeat them.

Theory

Practice

Assessment

Rewards

-- VladAtanasiu - 11 Jan 2012