Studio 8
Cava Design Critique
Part 1: Design Critique
Suppose you want to order a custom greens & grains bowl from Cava. Do not just randomly click on things, try to order something that you would actually eat (but do not actually place the order!). Assume cost is not an issue, and try to add several things from each category, even doubles of the same item, if you want a lot of it.
What do you like about this interface, compared to other similar ones you may have used? What usability problems can you find? We spotted at least 6. How would you fix them?
While we want you to focus on critiquing the bowl builder, you are welcome to critique other aspects of the site too.
As always, ground the usability issues you find in the vocabulary we have learned in class, such as LES, Nielsen's Heuristics, Tognazzini's First Principles etc.
Part 2: Writing a Heuristic Evaluation report
For this part, we will collaboratively author a heuristic evaluation report for Cava's bowl builder (and other parts of the site we have found issues, but the focus is the bowl builder). We are trying something for the first time: After the studio, we plan to combine the reports from the two studios into one and send it to Cava, so your work could actually make a difference!
We will be working in this document:
First, we will include a summary of both the positive design choices and the issues we discussed in class. Then, you will sign up to write about one of the issues. Depending on the number of issues and number of students, you may need to write about more than one, or we may have two students collaborating on the same issue.
We will loosely follow the format shown in lecture to describe each issue. This is to guide you, not to constrain you. Feel free to break out of this format whenever it would be useful.
User Testing
To prepare for HW8, we will be doing user testing of each other's paper prototypes. Do note that this is not the user testing required for HW8, but merely practice to help you prepare for it. Think of one task, as described in Exercise 2. Take turns as faciliatator and user. Make sure to explain to your subject what you are building, and what users it is for. The course staff will be observing, to give you feedback about how to better conduct user tests.