Project discription

2. Survey Form
Dear student,
Below is the link of survey Form. It is mandatory for all
students to fill up. Its very simple. You may fill up this
form within 5 minutes.
http://tempuri.org/tempuri.html
Thanks
In case of any issue, please let me know at
salmanbashir@vu.edu.pk or cs408@vu.edu.pk

3. Dear HCI Students
I would like to welcome you in the course of Human Computer
Interaction (CS408) on the behalf of Virtual university of Pakistan.
In this course, you will find a project throughout semester. This project
is about the core of HCI- which is Usability Evaluation. This project is
divided into some activities. Every assigned activity will be graded.
Detail of each activity and its related tasks will be announced soon.
You will be given step by step guidelines along with examples to
perform each activity. The core purpose of this activity is to enhance
your practical skills in HCI. At the end of this activity, you will be able to
learn and practiced the applied and core area of HCI. In few words, I
can say that the project is about
“The interaction/ usage of different mobile applications like
Facebook, Google Docs, and Skype etc. on smartphone
(Samsung/iPhone/…) and share your experience”.

4. Requirements of these Project
activities:
• Almost all of the students now a days have a mobile and
majority of these have smartphone like Samsung, iPhone,
htc, Qmobile etc. All those who owns smartphone, have
good familiarity to use different mobile applications like
whatsApp, Skype, Google Map and many more. Some of
you certainly not having smartphone, they should
arrange by themselves either by taking from his/her
family member or can make a group with a person who
have it. Second requirement is to get familiarity with
mobile device at least. It means one person should know
about how to attend a call, make a call, save contacts,
send/receive messages, etc.

5. Mode:
• All activities will be carried out using Quizzes,
Assignment interface, Google Docs, GDB,

6. Grading Scheme:
• 15-20% weightage of this project.

7. Your major role:
• Understand mobile application functionalities and the way to use
it.
• Observe the behavior of mobile application (only display) While
using mobile applications.
• Keep in mind the following questions while performing a task on
mobile application.
• Do you understand task and its related description?
• Do you have an idea about the outcome of task?
• Did you achieve the goal/objective of the task?
• Did you find any confusing interface that leads to misunderstanding
while achieving goal?
• Did you perform any irrelevant/additional work while achieving
target?

8. Your major role(cont..):
• Did you precisely mention the identified problem?
• Do you have any suggestion to improve performance? Do you think
it is possible to achieve goal more quickly?
• Did you calculate efficiency? Time required to complete the target.
Did you study the helping material and understand the way to
calculate the efficiency?
• Do you think working in pairwise is more appropriate and helps to
identify flaws easily?
• Do you know and understand the usage of gestural operations, its
meaning and behavior?
• Do you think Context aware app provides usable interface to users?
• Do you suggest what app should display for more usability if
required?

9. Special slide
• After Understanding different fields
(efficiency, effectiveness etc) in table and the
way to measure these, fill up the table
properly with values.
• If you find any query, please email me
at cs408@vu.edu.pk / salmanbashir@vu.edu.
pk
• Your participation will be highly appreciated.

10. Facilitation:
• You will be given the complete and concrete
understanding of all concepts and their
execution used in any activity
• You will be given a detailed step by step
guidelines.
• You will be given concrete examples of how to
perform a task.
• You will be provided the understanding of all
questions highlighted above.

11. Execution plan:
• At start, basic understanding and knowledge
about HCI which you have taken so for from the
first 6+ lectures of this course, along with some
other HCI related concepts like evaluation
concepts, introduction to different mobile
applications, their related functions/tasks,
smartphone basic features, and working
methodology will be discussed.
• Please note I will share with you all this material
today.

12. Execution plan (cont…):
• The purpose of this discussion is to give you
an idea about what to do and how to do. You
will find reading material available to you on
LMS in the form of documents and audio file.
A discussion will initiate on Skype to let you
facilitate and to minimize your confusion
about any concept. Your participation will be
highly appreciated

13. Execution plan (cont…):
• After this, a quiz will conduct to assess
students understanding about the above said
knowledge. This Quiz will be a Graded
Activity. A proper announcement about
schedule will upload soon on LMS.

14. Execution plan (cont…):
• Right after Quiz, you will find a day for
discussion. Next, you will find an assignment
in which you will be given 5 mobile
applications with some defined tasks and its
related description. You may take any other
additional (along with defined) task from
these 5 mobile applications. . It is advised to
perform this whole activity in pair wise.
However, if a student don’t find, then, he/she
can alone do this activity.

15. Execution plan (cont…):
• All those who wish to work in pair are
required to send the solution file individually
using your own id on LMS and on Google docs.
Just mention the pair in file uploading on
LMS.

16. Execution plan (cont…):
• In pair, each student will perform every assigned task.
When one person will perform task, other student will
observe him/her comfort, confidence, happy/unhappy,
easiness/complexity, time to complete task and guide
him/her wherever necessary to complete a task. Most
important task of the observer student is to assist the
performer student to fill up table with correct values. Now,
the observer will become performer and vice versa. Same
procedure will repeat. At the end of this activity, both of
the students will have their own tables containing
experimental data in them.
• If a student is alone performing this activity, then he/she is
required to note the relevant data and immediately after
executing task fill up the table with values.

17. Execution plan (cont…):
• Each task of this activity will perform two times by
each student. First time in a sitting/focused
environment like you are sitting in your class room/
sitting at some other place while executing task.
Second time execute the same task while moving like
jogging, gossiping with friends, buying something,
moving around in a bus etc. In static and dynamic
situation.
• It is suggested in pair wise, if one student performs a
task in sitting position, it would be nice if other student
will perform the same task in moving situations. In
such a way, there are more chances to identify
problems.

18. Table
Task Task
descriptio
n
Target
achieved?
(Effectiveness
)
Any
confusing/misleading/complex/irrelev
ant Step to achieve target? please
mention
Time to
complete
task(efficiency
)
If you are
given a
task to
evaluate
interface/
s to make
it more
usable for
yourself.
Do you
Suggest
any
change?
Just
mention
change.
Reason/
s of
change?
Pairwise
Activity is
more
appropriate
? Yes/No
Mobile
device+
Environmen
t like
jogging,
sitting etc

19. Execution plan (cont…):
•
• Before mid-exam another Quiz will be used to check
academic concepts.Before midterm, two assignments
will be given after first Quiz. Second quiz will held after
two assignments.
• In second assignment, 5 gesture based mobile
applications will be given to students and asked to
perform each defined task by following the scheme as
above. A special focus should be given to all multi
touch gestures operations like sharing, delete, save etc.
used to control mobile apps and try to evaluate
usefulness.