Exam format is answer 5 questions from 7 in 2 hours.

1. (a) The human eye has a number of limitations. Give three examples [3]

(b) For one of the limitations identified in (a), describe how this should be taken into account in the design of a visual interface [6]

(c) There are three types of human memory. List them. [3]

(d) Describe what is thought to happen when people ‘forget’ things [2]

(e) What is meant by chunking? [2]

(f) How does chunking affect GUI design? [4]

2. (a) Give two examples of how 3G system capabilities are different to 2 or 2.5G systems [4]

(b) For one of these, discuss how it will impact the development of a mobile application of your choice [16]

3. (a) What is meant by user-centered design? [2]

(b) How does evaluation fit into a user-centered design lifecycle? [3]

(c) What is the aim of evaluation? Who should use evaluation? [3]

(d) Describe two techniques for evaluation, highlighting their key points and the differences between them [12]

4. (a) Why is web page design different to designing for printed media? [6]

(b) What are ‘design guidelines’? [2]

(c) Neilsen produced some design guidelines for web sites. What were three issues he covered? [4]

(d) What is meant by ‘accessibility’? [2]

(e) Give three examples of how web sites can aid accessibility. [6]

5. How does extreme programming support user-centered design? [20]

Outline answers

1. (a) colour blindness, blind spot, visual acuity (resolution), overly sensitive to motion, etc.

(b) for any one, address the problems it can cause and so what has to be taken account of in the interface – colour blindness means that a significant proportion (do you know how many?) of the population cannot disambiguate red and green, so don’t use colour only as the factor on buttons or displays, and be aware that red and green next to each other may be viewed as the same by some, influencing visualizations and so on.

(c) subconscious, working or short-term, long-term

(d) Recall becomes harder, memory traces ‘overwritten’ by newer memories, problems in transferring short-term into long-term (episodic into semantic)

(e) Lumping things together into units

(f) Related things chunk best – leads to menu layouts. Also short term memory has capacity of 7+-2 chunks hence menus try to stick to those limits. Number of steps you have to remember limited to same, ideally.

2 (a) Either: technical description of different approach taken, or: greater bandwidth, always on connections

(b) Take this in any direction you want to – gaming, video on mobiles, videoconferencing, streaming t.v. – need to show how the technology will affect how this changes, what users will want and so on.

3. (a) focus on the needs of people, not on the system or the technology. Requires talking to them, understanding their needs, etc.

(b) In design stage when paper prototypes used to assess whether planned system is capable; when system trialled,

(c) To understand user needs, to check system or ideas match expectiations/do what they are meant to. Designers, UI specialists, testers. Programmers if involved in user discussions/extreme programming. In some ways, everyone!

(d) Questionnaires, talk-aloud, cognitive walkthrough etc. – discuss each and must identify differences – best to chose examples where the differences are clear. Differences in who they are used on, how they are administered, what different results you may expect etc.

4. (a) Different display characteristics (resolution, colours) and download speeds impose physical constraints. Web pages sometimes contain animations which are not found in printed media. Pages sometimes dynamic, sometimes interactive. Users expect them to be different so should design them to reflect this.

(b) Rules (or at least, strong suggestions) governing most aspects of a design that have been tested and evaluated and found to give a consistent, effective result.

(c) Pick any three (content not design, no or few images, navigation information, etc.)

(d) Access by disabled people

(e) Write to html standards, use alt tags for images, provide simple consistent effective navigation, use sensible colour choices, etc.

5. Answer would need to discuss extreme programming and relate it to the concepts behind user-centered design – both have many iterative loops with the end-user, both use scenarios widely, both allow for late changes in requirements, etc.