Some thoughts in terms of questions (or sub-parts of questions)
for the March 24th midterm.


Explain the concepts of task-centered design, user-centered design, and system-centered design. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being very low and 10 being very high) score each of the three in terms of their importance in the design process if our primary goal is usability.


Low-fidelity prototyping has advantages as well as disadvantages. (a) State and explain what you see as the two strongest advantages of using low-fidelity prototyping in general. (b) State and explain one potential disadvantage of low-fidelity prototypes.


You are being interviewed by Bank of America to be hired to help them address a problem they see themselves having with older customers. They have a feeling that older customers don't use ATM machines and the bank's web site because they are worried about making a mistake that will lose them money, or of somehow breaking the equipment.

They see this as a problem because it is more expensive for them to have to keep as many tellers on staff and available for longer hours, and if more of their customers used automated services, they (the bank) would save money.

Based on the techniques we discussed in class for gathering information about users and their actions, describe how you would approach this if you were hired. Give details, your job interview is riding on it!


What is the defintion of the word "affordance" within the context of this course? Provide a practical example to help someone with no experience thinking about this would find easy to understand.


What is the defintion of the concept of "transfer effect" within the context of this course? Provide a practical example of a positive effect..


In class we looked at eight specific basic cognitive principles that should be kept in mind when designing interfaces. Pick three of these and present real examples where either applying the principle helped or going against the principle hurt your user experience. Your examples must be ones other than those presented in class and in the notes.


Why is it better to present hand-drawn low-fidelity prototypes done in pencil than computer-drawn printouts that look as if they are screencaps when working with users to get ideas on design and feedback on initial designs?


If you had to pick a single creation in the history of HCI technology to identify as the one that has had the most impact, which would it be and why?


Given the following application domain (some specific one like the kiosk store would be provided):
* Write three full task scenarios for that application.
* Generate a list of 5-7 design implications and for what you see as the 3 most important of those, explain how they were generated from the scenarios and why you see them as important.