You should hand in one copy of your assignment/project by the time and date mentioned above to the appropriate 'hand-in location' at the Gulf College. Fill in the front cover (staple together with your assignment). MAKE SURE that you fill in all the relevant details on this form. An acknowledgement will be given to you upon receiving your assignment. This is your receipt, keep it. You can submit work by post, but you must send its recorded delivery, it must be postmarked two days before the deadline date and a copy must be kept by you in case it is lost in the post. Faxed assignments will not be accepted. You have to attend the demonstration.
Assignments must be submitted by the due date. The only circumstance in which assignments can be submitted late is if an extenuating circumstances form is submitted at the same time. In this circumstance, work may be submitted up to 2 weeks later only. If the extenuating circumstances are upheld, the assignment will be graded; otherwise a 0 will be awarded.
This assignment will assess learning outcomes:
1. Show awareness of fundamental issues of human computer interaction & cost-effective assessments of Usability
2. Apply common techniques in HCI to plan, investigate, model, synthesize & evaluate a small- scale prototype.
This is a group assignment. A group can have a maximum of 2 students. This assignment has two sections (Section A and Section B). Section A has to be written individually and Section B has to be written by the group.
Each member of the team has to demonstrate the assignment individually as a PowerPoint Presentation at the end of the semester.
Scenario
TO GO PIZZA is one of largest pizza restaurant chain with roughly 80% market share, making it one of Oman's largest fast food chains. With close to 100 stores across 5 cities, the TO GO Pizza Company is the highest grossing food brand company. The company's main branch is in Muscat and it has 3 business units, namely marketing, production and the management.
In the existing system, the customer's order is received by the receptionist of the company and is recorded in a paper. The receptionist has difficulty in processing the customer's orders on paper.
The Pizza manager has identified this problem and wanted to change the process into automation. The manager approached DATA TECH automation L.L.C, which was established in 2014 and is one of the leading solution providers in the Sultanate of Oman to automate their system. The main work of the automation company is to develop solutions as per the customer's requirements. The designers in the company apply HCI design principles and guidelines to design usable interfaces. This company performs only software development and it depends on SOFT TEST L.L.0 for testing the usability.
The usability testing generally includes testing user interfaces(UI) and user experience (UX). The usability engineers in the company evaluate the usability of the interfaces and they recommend solutions to improve the usability of the interfaces. The SOFT TEST L.L.0 reports to DATA TECH L.L.0 about their product's usability and the possible areas of improvement.
Windows Application Project: Pizza Order Processing System
Create a Windows application which should be able to process the order received from customers. The features of this application are login, customer registration, add a customer, delete a customer, update the customer, store order, change order, search customer, search order, and logout.
The design can include elements such as menu, icon, image / picture, window, and dialog box. The access permission for this application should be given only to the manager, receptionist and staff members by assigning each of them with a unique username and password. The valid users should login into the system to use their functionalities. The user should be able to search the customer / order. A database system can be used for maintaining records.
This application Pizza Order Processing System (POPS) should be an effective interactive system for the users.
Your Tasks:
The assignment is divided into Section A and Section B.
Both sections contain various tasks. Assume that you are working as an HCI designer as well as a usability engineer of the company who assigned to develop the application specified in the above scenario. You have to pair up with another student. Section A should be answered individually and section B should be answered as a group.
Section A is related to users, design principles and interaction. Section B is related to interface design and usability evaluation.
Implement the design principles and guidelines (discussed in Section A) in the interface design of the POPS. Include the details of the interface, usability, usability evaluation, usability problems and solutions in section B of your report.
You can choose any software (e.g. MS Visual Studio / Net Beans) that allows you to create a graphical user interface for POPS. You can apply HCI concepts to design this suable system. You can add more features in the application wherever needed.
Section A
- Identify the users of the interface. State the actions and context of each user in the application.
- Describe the graphical user interface objects to be applied to the proposed interface design.
- Explain the design principles required for the proposed interface design of POPS and specify their significance.
- Investigate about direct manipulation method and describe how it is suitable for the prototype development.
- Compare the direct manipulation method with another interaction method.
- As an HCI designer, how do you design a usable interface? Explain.
Section B
- Design and develop an interface by applying the design principles as discussed by both in Section A. Include screen layouts of the designed interface in your report and briefly explain.
- Investigate the use of an heuristic evaluation method for assessing the usability of the POPS and describe it.
- Discuss the usability problems identified during evaluation with examples.
- How will you improve the usability of the interface? Specify your recommendations /redesigns in detail.
Report Format
- Report structure, style and references Power Point Presentation
A ten-minute presentation about the design principles of the interface. The presentation should address the following:
- Introduction to POPS
- Categorize the important / non-important activities of the users in POPS and explain them.
- Explain the design principles and their implications using graphical user interface(GUI) objects in the interface design.