DUE Sunday, May 06 – 3 points
(Monday NOON deadline)

We talked about usability during Week 9. I discovered this video to late to incorporate it into the course assignments, but I think it is really valuable and wanted to be sure you had a chance to watch it.

• Usability Demo (24:26)
  Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy, has made available this demonstration usability test. It provides some great insight into how to run such a test and how to make modifications to a web site in response to the results of those tests.

  (I would recommend you click the “Watch Full-Screen Version” link in the sidebar; that way you’ll be able to pause the video and move forward or backward more easily than the default player.)

Once you have listened to this material, you will need to take a quiz of ten true-false questions. (These questions will be randomly selected from the questions below. You can retake the quiz up to five times. Don’t stress about getting 100% on these quizzes: if you get 80% or better, you will be ready to proceed to the next activity and I will give you full credit.)

All questions should be prefaced with an understood, “According to the author of the material … “:

1. T/F? Steve recommends that a real usability test take about an hour.
2. T/F? Steve picked the site for this demonstration because he knew it had a lot of problems.
3. T/F? Steve reads the introduction to the test from a script so that he always remembers to mention everything and keeps the phrasing consistent from test to test.
4. T/F? Melanie estimated that she spends about 20 hours using the internet.
5. T/F? Melanie knew what the Zipcar iPhone app would do and wanted to get it.
6. T/F? The first task Steve gave to Melanie was to calculate the cost of a Zipcar to use it for one month to get to a class one day a week and to run errands one day a month.
7. T/F? Melanie was confused when the rate on a particular car was different than the rate listed on the Rates page.
8. T/F? Melanie felt confident that a Zipcar would be available when she needed one after she read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the site.
9. T/F? Steve recommends making small tweaks to address usability issues like those found in this demonstration, only resorting to a redesign if tweaking does not work.
10. T/F? Steve recommended adding tabs to the left side of the Rates page to make it clear that the rates listed were minimums.

DUE Sunday, May 06 – 3 points
(Monday NOON deadline)