And lastly, researcher roles.
How many researchers are actually needed to run the study and
what their roles might be.
And so the reason we're asking you to do this assignment is because this is
actually a very common task in user experience roles.
So there's some aspect of a system that you may be asked to test.
And the very first thing you need to do is you need to draft out this plan
that will articulate all these aspects of it, all these objectives.
So that you know what will actually happen in your user study.
As we of course know user studies cost money and they cost time so
you want to make sure that you use that time well.
Now in terms of the components I'd say the key things, the things that will probably
take the most time for you to think about and write are the methods and metrics.
So what are actually measuring.
How are you actually going to set up your study in the tasks?
What are the specific tasks that the user's going to be asked to do with
the system?
Now let me kind of go through quickly the situating context that you'll be using for
this assignment.
So I will ask you to pretend that you've been hired as a consultant
to evaluate a new web-based public library catalog.
So I'm not sure if your county or your state or
your country has these kind of public library catalogs.
I will provide you with one that you can kind of use as kind of an inspiration as
you think about this.
But let's imagine that a new web-based public library catalog is being designed
to replace the old web-based library catalog.
And what the designers are hoping for is that the new one will be easier to use,
that it will make it easier to explore and find you books to read.
It'll be faster to finding a specific book if somebody already knows exactly what
they want to find.