A Turnitin submission link will be made available on Moodle prior to the due date. As
you submit, your assignment will be passed through a plagiarism check. If there are
any issues, you can re-submit the assignment and a new plagiarism report will be
generated. PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT SUBMISSIONS, IT
CAN TAKE UP TO 24 HOURS TO GENERATE THE PLAGIARISM REPORT, SO DO NOT
LEAVE THIS TO THE LAST MINUTE!
Introduction
In this assignment, you will use the content that is presented in Week 1 and Week 2
lectures (Design Principles, Visual Design, and Accessibility) and the first lecture of Week
3 (Stakeholders, Persona, and Scenario) to critically analyse the user interface of a video
game distribution service website.
This document is for both undergraduate students enrolled in COMP3511, and
postgraduate students enrolled in COMP9511.
Assessment
Please ensure you read the following carefully, as there is important information regarding
how you are to submit the assignment.
● The assignment constitutes 25% of your final assessment.
● This assignment is to be completed individually.
● A late penalty of 10% will be deducted (off the raw mark) per day (or part thereof)
late. Assignments more than 4 days late will not be marked. Assignments
submitted after 18:00 on the due date will be marked as late.
Submission
The assignment is to be submitted electronically through Moodle as a PDF.
The assignment is due and to be submitted online (using the provided link) in week 4,
Saturday, Jun 25th at 18:00.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In the final hours or so before the submission deadline, Moodle often
experiences a high load as students try to submit at once. A late submission because
Moodle was overloaded is not a valid excuse. Upload earlier! Uploading your assignment
earlier will also give you a chance to make any necessary changes to your work if
plagiarism is detected by the plagiarism checker upon submission.
User Interface Critique
In designing a user interface, the best approach is to perform an iterative review and
refinement based on feedback from your users. This model is applied through all the
stages of development. Before you start the process of designing an interface, however,
it is important to know what characteristics or principles a website should adhere to. It
is important to be able to critique what makes a website good or bad, without simply
stating that you do or do not like it. The critique should allude to formal user interface
principles and theories and should not just be based on your own ideas. The process of
providing a critique involves not just stating negative aspects of the interface, but also the
good. The point of critiquing is to provide fixes or improvements to the problems
encountered, using formal principles and methods. In the first COMP3511/COMP9511
Assignment, you are expected to learn how to critique a user interface.
COMP3511/9511 – Human Computer Interaction
Assignment 1
3
The following presents a list of steps that you need to follow to complete the
assignment. Please set out your work clearly in a report-based format.
1. In this assignment, you will analyse one video game digital distribution service
website. You can analyse one of the websites below:
a. Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/)
b. Crazy Games (https://www.crazygames.com/)
c. Gog (https://www.gog.com/)
d. Humble (https://www.humblebundle.com/store)
e. Itch (Itch.io.)
f. Green Man Gaming (https://www.greenmangaming.com)
g. Epic Games Store (https://store.epicgames.com)
h. Ubi Soft (https://store.ubi.com/)
i. Fanatical (https://www.fanatical.com/)
? You can analyse the whole website or just some specific pages.
? Please make sure you review a website in the English language.
2. After choosing the website, you should provide a brief explanation of the purpose of
the website and state three goals of the selected website.
3. “Users” - Who do you think would use this website? Give examples of FIVE different
types of people that would use this website. Try to come up with different types of
people (who may have differing needs – are they primary, secondary, or tertiary
stakeholders?)! Give a brief description of each of these stakeholders (2-3 lines for
each stakeholder).
4. “Tasks” - Choose TWO users from your list above, and analyse what it is each of those
people are trying to accomplish when they use this website? For each one of the two
people that you identified above, please describe a function or task that they are trying
to achieve when they use your selected site. You can also mention the users’ broader
goals. Try to choose tasks that differ to give the best possible overview of your chosen
interface. In one paragraph explain why you have chosen these particular users and
their tasks.
Now, you will conduct a “WALKTHROUGH” of your chosen website using the tasks that
you have come up with in Step 3. You do not need to write down the series of steps of
the walkthrough, you just need to be aware of any issues that were encountered in the
process.
5. “Analysis of the Design Principles” - As you do your walkthrough of the interface, note
down any issues you are having or any positive aspects of the interface in an issues
table (see Appendix B). Then choose SEVEN issues from your issues table and IN
DETAIL provide a critique of the issues and potential solutions to solve the issue.
critique is based on Design Principles, Heuristics, Usability Goals and User Experience
Goals found in Appendix A. For your issues table, please use Appendix B – a template
provided for you to record the issues.
Please consider the points below in your analysis:
a. In your issue table, you should try to list as many usability issues as you can,
including both positive and negative issues.
b. Number each of the issues that you discovered in your walkthrough. The issues
table will consist of an Issue Number, Positive/Negative, Severity rating of each
issue, Description of Issue, Heuristic/Design Principle that applies to each issue,
Effects of each issue on the usability goals and the user experience goals,
Sketch/Screenshot of the issue with annotation that explains the issue visually
(You should annotate your screenshots to make it clear where the issue presents
itself).
As you go, link your observations to the design principles, and heuristics
principles and indicate how the lack of or the existence of each principle could
affect the usability goals and consequently user experience goals.
For example, if the links text colour is completely different in different pages of
the website, it is an example of lack of consistency which is related to the design
principal category, lack of consistency can affect learnability which is related to
usability goals, and it can make the website annoying or frustrating which is
related to the user experience goals. You can find this example in appendix B.
c. Please consider that each issue can be related to more than one design or the
heuristic principle.
d. You must consider both positive and negative observations.
e. You should take screenshots and point out specific features on the screenshots
by annotating the screenshots. We strongly encourage you to take regular
screenshots as the websites are live and can change without notice.
Pictures below show some examples of annotated screenshots:
f. Now using your issues table, choose SEVEN issues from your issues table and
IN DETAIL provide a critique of the issues and potential solutions to solve the
issue. For example, if you have 20 issues in your issue table, choose the Seven
most important issues and explain them in detail.
g. You should explain each issue based on the design principles, the heuristics
principles, or a combination of both, then mention why and lack of or existence
of each issue could increase or decrease the usability goals and consequently
the user experience goals.
h. You should also define the principles the first time you use them (make sure to
reference where you got the definition from. HINT: Read the textbook).
i. Your critical analysis should have enough detail. For instance, it is not enough to
just mention “the arrangement of buttons provides a poor mapping.” You must be
able to justify each of your points in detail.
6. “Analysis of the Visual Design” - In this section you should analyse the chosen website
based on different visual design elements. Consider the visual design of the website
in terms of:
- Proximity of elements to create groups
- Proximity of elements to create relationships
- Use of symmetry or asymmetry
- Use of white space
- Use of colour harmony - what colours are used and what scheme is this? Is
colour used effectively?
COMP3511/9511 – Human Computer Interaction
Assignment 1
6
- Colour contrast
- Alignment of the components
- Placement of the elements to support logical flow through a task
- …
* Provide some screenshots for this section, it is not necessary to provide one
screenshot for each visual design issue. If one screenshot can cover different visual
design issues, just annotate the issues on the screenshot.
7. “Analysis of Accessibility” - In this section you will analyse the website in terms of the
accessibility for people with different kinds of disabilities including vision impairment,
colour blindness, hearing impairment, etc. You should analyse the website limitations
for users with a disability and explain any specific accessibility features that the
website provides.
* You don't need to provide any screenshot for the accessibility section.
8. “Propose and sketch design solutions” - Looking at the issues related to the design
principles, visual design and accessibility and explain and sketch 14 potential
solutions (7 sketches related to the usability issues, 4 sketches related to the visual
design principles, and 3 sketches related to the accessibility considerations) to these
issues that you think may improve the interface. Please annotate the sketch of your
solution with what you have changed and explain how it has improved the interface
or removed the issue you have found.
There is a 21 page limit to this assignment with line spacing 1.5 for the content and
line spacing 1.0 or 1.5 for the tables and references. Please do not exceed the limit.
The following should be used as an overall guide for structuring your report:
A. Title Page, stating title of your assignment, your name, student number and the
name of your tutor – THIS IS NOT INCLUDED IN YOUR PAGE LIMIT
B. INTERFACE (0.5 page)
C. USERS (1 paragraph, up to 0.5 page)
D. TASKS related to TWO of the above users and justification of why you chose
each of the above users/tasks (0.5 page)
E. ISSUES TABLE (including Annotated Screenshots) (3-4 pages).
F. Analysis of the 7 design issues (3-4 pages).
G. Analysis of the visual design (2-3 pages).
H. Analysis of the accessibility (2 pages).
I. Design solutions and sketch of the solutions (5-6 pages) – each sketch must
be at least 1/3 a page for readability
J. References - Your references can either be part of your page limit or can be
outside of this.
Note to the above: The number of pages above are guidelines and suggested maximums
for each section. You do not need to fill the suggested space. The maximum for the
report is 21 pages in total, please note that the title page does not contribute to this page
COMP3511/9511 – Human Computer Interaction
Assignment 1
7
limit.
Your work is evaluated based on your depth of analysis and accuracy of your answers.
Therefore, if the number of pages is less than 21, it cannot affect your mark given you
covered all the requested items of the assignment.
Formatting
Please read the following carefully, as there are marks allocated for your
formatting and presentation.
● The report should be presented in an A4 document.
● 12-point font should be used for the main body of text.
● The report, excluding the cover pages, must be a maximum of 21 pages with 1.5
line spacing.
● Consider including the following: (HINT: Use this as a checklist)
o Page numbers
o Headers/Footers on each page
o Consistent font sizes (e.g., Use the same font size for all headings)
o Use 1.5 line spacing
o Correct use of paragraphs
o Use of the spell checker and grammar checker
o Correct use of professional referencing techniques in both the body of the
text as well as including a full list of references at the end. For more details
about how to reference within a report, please use the following resource:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/harvard-referencing. You may use other
formats of referencing (e.g. APA or IEEE) if you are consistent.
o Include your personal details such as name, student number, tutorial time,
and tutor on the title page.
It is our experience that many CSE students who study HCI go on to work in design
and UI work, where reporting is highly regarded. You must take pride in your
reports and make them presentable. They are easy marks you cannot afford to
lose.
Learning Outcomes
Apply your understanding of the heuristics and design principles to formally
evaluate the usability and user experience goals of an interface.
Evaluate the visual design of a website.
Apply your knowledge of accessibility to evaluate the accessibility limitations of
a website.
Identify both positive and negative aspects of design.
Understand how the design of a system is influenced by the intended audience.
Consider accessibility issues.
To understand the practical issues of real-world interface design and evaluation.
Plagiarism
If plagiarism is detected a maximum penalty of zero marks will be awarded for this
assignment. Note that all cases of plagiarism are reported to the School Plagiarism
officer. All assignments are run though a plagiarism checker so it would be ill advised
to copy and paste either from the web, or from another student.
Assignments are checked against a database of past and present submissions, along
with online websites and other resources.
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the presentation of the thoughts or work of another as one’s own. *
Examples include:
direct duplication of the thoughts or work of another, including by copying
material, ideas or concepts from a book, article, report, or other written document
(whether published or unpublished), composition, artwork, design, drawing,
circuitry, computer program or software, web site, Internet, other electronic
resource, or another person’s assignment without appropriate acknowledgement.
paraphrasing another person’s work with very minor changes keeping the
meaning, form and/or progression of ideas of the original.
piecing together sections of the work of others into a new whole.
presenting an assessment item as independent work when it has been produced
in whole or part in collusion with other people, for example, another student or a
tutor; and
claiming credit for a proportion a work contributed to a group assessment item
that is greater than that actually contributed.
For the purposes of this policy, submitting an assessment item that has already been
submitted for academic credit elsewhere may be considered plagiarism.
Knowingly permitting your work to be copied by another student may also be considered
to be plagiarism.
Note that an assessment item produced in oral, not written, form, or involving live
presentation, may similarly contain plagiarised material.
The inclusion of the thoughts or work of another with attribution appropriate to the
academic discipline does not amount to plagiarism.
The Learning Centre website is main repository for resources for staff and students on
plagiarism and academic honesty. These resources can be located via:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism
The Learning Centre also provides substantial educational written materials, workshops,
and tutorials to aid students, for example, in:
correct referencing practices.
paraphrasing, summarising, essay writing, and time management.
appropriate use of, and attribution for, a range of materials including text, images,
COMP3511/9511 – Human Computer Interaction
Assignment 1
9
formulae, and concepts.
Individual assistance is available on request from The Learning Centre.
Students are also reminded that careful time management is an important part of study
and one of the identified causes of plagiarism is poor time management.
Students should allow sufficient time for research, drafting, and the proper referencing
of sources in preparing all assessment items.
* Based on that proposed to the University of Newcastle by the St James Ethics Centre.
Used with kind permission from the University of Newcastle Adapted with kind
permission from the University of Melbourne.
COMP3511/9511 – Human Computer Interaction