Assignment 3: Ethnographic Study and User Task Analysis
Familiarize yourself with the basic concepts on how to conduct a field study and identifying user needs by reading the resources and the textbook.
Detailed Instructions
This assignment is the first of several that together will take you through the various steps in designing, prototyping, and evaluating a user interface. The overall goal is to design and eventually evaluate the user interface for an interactive touch screen based menu that may be used in a restaurant. These might be somewhat similar to touch screen vending machines already in use. You need to conduct some research on such systems and how and where they might be used.
- Identify the users for such a system and if possible observe them performing a task that would eventually be implemented in the new system. Think about your own experiences and perhaps interview some of the users about their experience. Perhaps a visit to a restaurant would be valuable (keep notes and perhaps record the ordering process.) Be sure to show all of your actual hand-written notes in an appendix of your report (scanned image is acceptable). Clearly explain in the report how you went about gathering the requirements. Provide details of time, location, etc.
- Create a profile of your archetypical users, including users' average age, background, computer experience, and so forth.
- Define at least three distinct personas for the different types of users that might use the system and that provide you with insight into the different needs of various classes of users.
- Identity at least three use cases. One of your use cases must be for placing a food order.
- Identify the main steps in the normal scenario of "ordering lunch". List the steps for that scenario.
- Identify alternate scenarios and exceptions that could occur and document the steps that would need to be taken to accommodate those variations.
- Create a hierarchical decomposition of the use case, i.e., perform a hierarchical task analysis (HTA) for the use case of ordering lunch using the interactive menu.
- Document your discoveries in a complete report that follows the report template. Name your report file as IS4300.S12.LastName.
Resources Required
Total Number of Earnable Points: 70 Points
Approximate Time to Complete: 6-8 Hours
Due Date: see Syllabus or Blackboard
Approximate Time to Complete: 6-8 Hours
Due Date: see Syllabus or Blackboard