Winter 2007
Changes in
red.
Your goal in this
assignment is to critique a commercially available software application or
other computing apparatus on its "learnability",
"flexibility", and "robustness". These three terms are used in Dix et al.'s textbook as three
main categories of "principles to support usability" (see section
7.2, beginning on page 260). For
each of these categories there is a further set of “principles affecting
[category]” (see Tables 7-1, 7-2, and 7-3).
Your critique should begin
with a summary of the principles, crafted in your own words but with reference
to Dix et al.'s ideas. Following
this, provide six (6) detailed examples from the chosen application or
apparatus, two for each principle.
For each two, one should demonstrate how a principle is correctly
applied, and one should demonstrate how a principle is incorrectly
applied. Use screen snaps or other
visual aides to support your examples. Your examples may be taken from
different applications. It might
be useful to organize your example in a table or tables, but this is for you to
decide.
Format. Format your submission according to the "CHI Conference
Publications Format". Click here to download a template in MS Word format.
Submission. Submit your review as a PDF or DOC file in Prism using the
command 'submit 4441 a2 a2.xxx', where xxx is either pdf or doc.