INF3720 Assignment 2 2024 | Due 2 August 2024

Description

Question 1: 13 marks
Question 1.1
Many software products suffer from interaction design errors that are
annoying to users because they do not follow fundamental design
principles. As an interaction designer, how can you ensure that software
products are designed to provide a good user experience? (2 marks)
Question 1.2
There is a fine line between an interaction that works and one that is
usable. Designing interactions that work and are usable is achievable if
design principles are appropriately applied. Discuss the design
principles that guide interaction design. (5 marks)
Question 1.3
Identify and discuss five usability goals. Also, provide one positive or
one negative comment regarding the usability of myUnisa that you have
experienced for each of the goals. (6 marks)
Question 2: 19 marks
Question 2.1
Assume that you are involved in developing a new mobile learning site
for a high-school mathematics course. Suggest ways to apply the user-
centred principles in this task. (9 marks)
Question 2.2
As an interaction designer, assume that you developed a mobile
application for managing recipes for everyday cooking. Discuss what
could have inspired you when designing the application? (5 marks)
Question 2.3
When following a user-centred approach in interaction design, there is a
principle of ‘focus on users and tasks early’. This is one of the principles
that make it easy and useful to use a computer system. Name and
explain the five sub-principles that explain the meaning of the above
statement. (5 marks)
Question 3 (9 marks)
Loadshedding is a problem in South Africa. As an interaction designer,
your local municipality approached you to design a load-shedding
application that runs on a smartphone. As the first step in designing the
load-shedding application, apply the core components of the conceptual
model to answer the following questions.
3.1 For each component of the conceptual model (4 marks):
•
Provide a metaphor and analogy that you are going to use when
designing the load-shedding application.
•
Provide concepts to which people will be exposed through the app.
•
Provide examples of relationships between concepts.
•
Provide the mappings between the concepts and the UX the
product is designed to support.
3.2 Draw a conceptual model for the load-shedding application. (5 marks)
Question 4 (10 marks)
Visit myUnisa and familiarise yourself with the discussion forums. Your
task is to evaluate discussion forums and not to vent your frustrations
about your e-tutors or the lecturer. Focus on evaluating the discussion
forum.
Evaluate the discussion forum from the perspective of social interaction
of distance learning students and discuss people’s social disposition, the
ideal of face-to-face conversations and the challenges. Discuss remote
conversations and co-presence of distance learning students. (10 marks)
Question 5: 15 marks
As an interaction designer, you were hired to develop an app that tracks
eating habits. The app helps users monitor their nutrition, calories, and
daily activities. Similar apps exist; however, the app you are designing
must support South African adult users. Answer the following questions.
5.1 Explain the strategies for ensuring that the designed app is
persuasive. (3 marks)
5.2 How are you going to design an interface that is believable and
trustworthy (3 marks)
5.3 How are you going to eliminate the possibility of creating an
annoying interface (3 marks)
5.4 How are you going to make the app aesthetically pleasing to users?
(3 marks)
THEORY
APPLICATION
4.1 People’s social disposition
4.2 In-person face-to-face
conversations
4.3 Challenges for Discussion
Forums
4.4 Remote conversations
4.5 Co-presence
5.5 What technologies are you going to use to detect the emotional
states of users (3 marks)

Question 6: 10 marks
There are gadgets on the market for reading e-books, watching movies,
or viewing pictures. The exact design differs between models, but they
support book reading in a way as comfortable as reading a paper book.
The developer of a new electronic gadget wants to find out how
appealing it will be to young people under 18 years of age. You were
contracted to carry out interviews by the developer. Answer the following
questions in preparation for the interview:
6.1 What is the goal of your data-gathering session? (2 mark)
6.2 List any three techniques that could be used to capture the
interviews. (3 marks)
6.3 What are the disadvantages of taking notes during interviews? (2
marks)
6.4 Suggest any three unstructured interview questions. (3 marks)

Question 7: (9 marks)
School of Computing has a small library not associated with
the university’s main library. The library has a collection of
information systems textbooks and computer science journals. The
library uses an Excel spreadsheet to manage the library, and the
challenge is that when borrowers get books from the library, they return
them late or sometimes never return them. The borrowers include
students and all school computing staff. You were approached to write a
software program to track late returns and non-returned books.
7.1 Identify two common types of requirement discovery in the context of
the library system (2 marks).
7.2 Create any 2 functional requirements of the library system (2 marks).
7.3 Choose one functional requirement of the library systems and
present it as an atomic requirement. Use the Volere template (refer to
the prescribed book). (5 marks)

Question 8 (15 marks)
Go to myUnisa under Additional resources and download the file “Case
study – Academic library. pdf”. Read the case study and answer the
following questions.
8.1 What was the purpose of the usability evaluation? (1 marks)
8.2 What challenges were encountered in performing the usability
testing of the website? (4 marks)
8.3 What data collection methods were used to collect data? (5 marks)
8.4 List five issues discovered by usability testing. (5 marks)