1. VALET • VACCINE LAB • Purdue University 1
VALET
PROJECT PROPOSAL
Prepared for ECE695D • Sep 8, 2013
Project Proposal
v.1
Project Proposal
1. Introduction
1.1. About the Technology
2. Project Vision
3. User Data
3.1. Experiment data collection
3.2 Design related propositions
4.Future
5.References
AMPLPrepared for John Cooper • Aug 15, 2012
1. Introduction
1.1. About the Technology
For the ECE 695D course project, we wish to evaluate a Visual analytics technology called Visual
Analytics, Law Enforcement toolkit (VALET) developed by the VACCINE lab. The main audience of the
product is the law enforcement officials. We wish evaluate the User interface of the product and conduct
Usability analyses of the product and propose design suggestions and recommendations, taking into
consideration the human aspects like cognition, attention, and memory. This project is an undertaking of
two students: Joseph Choi and Shweta Gupte.
2. Project Vision
The main purpose of this project is to find out how much value this product would carry when it is
put in practice. We will be evaluating it from the user side in hope of enhancing the user interface and
thus improving the user experience. Below is the current design of the product:

2. VALET • VACCINE LAB • Purdue University 2
Figure 1:Current VALET User Interface
The preliminary self-reported analysis revealed that the user interface is not very user-friendly. The
product is merely a prototype so this would be an appropriate time to do Usability analyses of the system
and propose some design improvements.
Below is our break down of the project:
Figure 2: Overview breakdown of the project
In the above figure the linguistic survey means the toolbar and menu items the text used in the interface.
This survey is done to figure out if the test used is known to the user and is a common knowledge to the
user or not.
The user data and the linguistic survey, along with the interface critique, will shape the propositions of
design changes.

3. VALET • VACCINE LAB • Purdue University 3
3. User Data
3.1. Experiment data collection
The VACCINE lab has approved IRB for testing the software with users who would be directly working
with the product. The various ways we can do data collection is:
■ Surveys
■ Interviews
■ Record the user actions.
■ Goal directed experiment and recording times
We plan to conduct experiment within subject. We can also design experiment such that half subjects
will be given brief training and the other half will not. Another option is to test one group with current
version, then, build a new design and test a new group with the new version. Then, we would give
testing to the new group with the old version and previous group the new version. Subjects will be
randomly assigned to each group. Making a new version will not be feasible for this semester.
Our primary semester goal is to collect the user data for the old version only for one group. We will do a
goal directed study and collect the time it took the user to complete given tasks, how easy it will be for
users to evaluate their plan of action and organize the resources. We will record the user action and
activity as well during this process. Simple interviews and surveys will yield more insight into how the
users try to solve a problem and draw conclusion to achieve their goal (know their train of thought). We
can also get feedback on the interface and their expectations.
We can compare VALET to other existing systems the users have used before.
3.2 Design related propositions
We are more interested in knowing how difficult or easy it is to use the current system. During the self-
reported analysis it was found that there were many things that confused the users like the color
combinations, too many options they need to pick before they can start analyzing, and etc. A few design
proposals that we are interested in investigating further are:
■ Information scent-Providing Visual cues to the users to help them navigate the product (Chi et
al,2000)
■ Cognitive task analysis (Crandall and Hoffman,2006)
GOMS is one of the ways we can test the Human computer interaction.(Card, Thomas,and
Newell,1983)
4. Future
For future work, the new UI should be compared with the current UI by conducting User study to know
whether the new design works better than the current one. An expert review would also be required.
5. References
i. MAY, J., & Barnard,P. J. (2003).Cognitive Task Analysis in ICS. In D. Diaper & N. Stanton (Eds.), The
Handbook ofTask Analysis in Human-Computer Interaction (pp.291 - 325)
ii. Kieras, D., John, B., The GOMS Family of Analysis Techniques: Tools for Design and Evaluation,
CMU-HCII-94-106, 1994
iii. Kieras, D., John, B., Using GOMS for User Interface Design and Evaluation: Which Technique?,
June-1996

4. VALET • VACCINE LAB • Purdue University 4
iv. Kieras, D., John, B., The GOMS Family of User Interface Analysis Techniques: Comparison and
Contrast
v. Card, Stuart; Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell (1983). The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
vi. Ed H. Chi, Peter Pirolli, James Pitkow. The Scent of a Site: A System for Analyzing and Predicting
Information Scent, Usage, and Usability of a Web Site. In Proc. of ACM CHI 2000 Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 161--168, 581, 582.
vii. Crandall,B., Klein, G., and Hoffman, R. (2006). Working minds:A practitioner's guide to cognitive task analysis.
MIT Press.