Instructor: Daniel Klyn

Team: Jessica DuVerneay, Martha Gukeisen, Therese Nielsen

Objectives: A good deal of time in this course was spent covering the core principles of information architecture via Morville and Rosenfeld's Information Architecture for the World Wide Web Within teams, we prepared presentations based on B.J. Fogg’s Stanford Web Credibility Research and also compiled book reports and evaluated a current website with respect to information architecture. For the book report, my team had the great opportunity of reviewing The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett. For the evaluation, we looked at the Student Activities and Leadership (SAL) website at University of Michigan. (http://lso.umich.edu)

Results: For the SAL evaluation, we gathered information about the site's users via interviews and a survey, and later engaged in a collaborative card sort to begin structuring the site's information. We found that there was a great deal of overlap and outdated information, and came up with a cleaner and more streamlined structure for the site. Documentation of our recommendations can be found in the architecture diagram and wireframes that I created.

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Instructor: Nadine Sarter

Team: Adam Clarke, Dan Nathan-Roberts, Therese Nielsen, John Suciu

Objectives: Exploring many topics relevant to HCI and Human Factors, the class focused on the importance of decision-making and problem solving support within a range of domains, considering ways that artifacts, social interactions, and factors such as time pressure, competing demands, and uncertainty affect perceptual and cognitive performance. Theoretical concepts from authors such as Bainbridge, Rasmussen, Wickens, Norman, Hutchins, Woods, Nielsen, and Shneiderman were discussed at length. We applied what we learned throughout the semester in a redesign of the Industrial & Operations Engineering website (http://ioe.engin.umich.edu/), which was carried out within teams.

Results: After becoming familiar with the site’s structure, our team conducted interviews with engineering students to learn first-hand impressions from users. From there, we developed personas and scenarios, representing different types of users and conducted a heuristic evaluation. Our analysis brought to light many usability issues within the website that warranted significant aesthetic, structural, and functional changes. As a team, we came up with several ways to support user memory, streamline information flow, and eliminate confusion for users of the site, demonstrating our findings in a working prototype which I designed and implemented.

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Instructor: Mick McQuaid

Team: Manisha Gupta, Jessica L'Esperance, Therese Nielsen

Objectives: The course included weekly in-class exercises which sparked creativity and on-the-fly brainstorming sessions, where we collaboratively devised interfaces for a variety of contexts, such as an ambient notification system or a 1000 floor elevator. Readings included Norman’s Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, and we also covered readings from Cooper, Shneiderman, Nielsen, and Grudin.

A primary focus of this course was to work directly with a local client to create an interactive interface. My team worked with the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum on an interface for a hand held device that could be used within the museum, where users could interact with exhibits. After exploring target user possibilities, we settled on gradeschool kids and their teachers for school fieldtrips. Then, we came up with an initial list of features and modes of interaction. Fortunately, we had access to a Nokia N800 internet tablet, which fulfilled many of the functional specifications we discussed.

Results: Completing several milestones including contextual inquiry, persona development, lo-fi prototyping, written scenarios, and hi-fi prototyping, we developed an innovative interface based on iterative design. I created and implemented a hi-fidelity interactive Flash prototype for the handheld device. Our prototype received an award at the 2007 expoSItion, a showcase of works from student teams at the School of Information.

Many details can be found on a website another team member put together: http://si-682-handson.info. Check out our Project Photo Gallery, which shows documentation of activity observed at the museum, affinity diagramming, and collaging/mood boarding.

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Instructors: Judy Olson and Ixchel Faniel

Team: Ahmad Al-Jadaan, Sherri Brown, Shelby Newman, Therese Nielsen

Objectives: The course introduced students to a variety of modeling approaches, the end goal being to use those models to help understand an organization's information flows and communication patterns, and identify areas for improvement. A good deal of attention was given to Contextual Inquiry, using Holtzblatt, Wendell, and Woods' Rapid Contextual Design.

Results: My team worked directly with organizational members of the Ypsilanti Convention and Visitors Bureau (YCVB) and some of their stakeholders, conducting interviews and contextual inquiry sessions, and then regrouping as a team for interpretation sessions and brainstorming. Individually, we completed various models to help understand the YCVB's information usage patterns, including a cultural model that I created, a physical model, an artifact model, and a communication flow model. As a team, we constructed an affinity diagram. In the end, we were able to identify and present many salient issues and areas of improvement to the organization, who was in turn grateful for our insights.

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