MAKERERE UNIVERSITY

MIT 7217 WEB DESIGN AND USABILITY

Emesu Jacob StudentNo: 2200705577 RegNo: 2022/HD05/5577U

TEST I

QUESTION ONE (25 MARKS)

a. Using a suitable example, the importance of the following as applied to usability, when designing web-
based systems: -
i. Interface. A well-designed interface is easy to use.it has unwritten easy instructions that a user
can follow as he/she is using the system. For example, an ATM machine provides for selection of
language to use.
ii. Interaction. The interface should be easy to interact with. It gives you feedback and instructions
on what to do next. An ATM machine can easily alert you that you have either put in a wrong
PIN code, or you have requested the amount of money which is above your balance.
iii. Interaction model.  This provides for the structure, consistency, direction, and feedback for the
product, with the goal of helping users reach a state of flow. For example, The ATM machine will
change the language basing on your selection.

b. With relevant examples, explain the following general principles of Usability in relation to web
application design

i. The principle of naturalness. The application interface should be easy to use, interactive and have
guiding instructions. For example, online banking systems have 2 different provisions for signing
in for already existing user and it enables new users to create an account with the web application.
ii. The principles of error prevention and/or reversal of actions. Centenary bank online banking
system will have all instructions of the transaction that you want to make, Bank to bank
transaction, Airtime purchase and Bank to wallet (mobile money) transfer. Upon initiation of
transaction, it prompts you to confirm your details / entries before the final transaction is made.
This enables the user to eliminate errors.

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c. As new computing technologies arrive, new perceptions of usability are created. Write short notes on
each of the following paradigm shifts of usability:
i. Network-based Systems. These are devices intelligently distributed within networks that
passively inspect traffic traversing the devices on which they sit.
ii. Graphical Displays communicate comparisons, relationships, and trends. They emphasize and
clarify numbers.
iii. The World Wide Web: It’s an information system enabling documents and other web resources to
be accessed over the Internet.
iv. Ubiquitous Computing: It’s a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and
computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere.

d. Consider a proposal to have a web-based portal that enables new Makerere students to apply for Identity
Cards in six simple sequential steps. Discuss the four golden rules of navigation that should be adhered to
in the design of this proposed portal.
1) Place users in control of the interface. Keeping users in control makes them comfortable; they
will learn quickly and gain a fast sense of mastery. Make actions reversible – be forgiving This
rule means that the user should always be able to quickly backtrack whatever they are doing
2) Make it comfortable for a user to interact with a product. Simplify interfaces by removing
unnecessary elements or content that does not directly support user tasks. Strive to design UI in a
way that all information presented on the screen will be valuable and relevant. Examine every
element and evaluate it based on the value it delivers to users.
3) Reduce cognitive load. Cognitive load is the amount of mental processing power required to use a
product. It’s better to avoid making users think/work too hard to use your product.
4) Make user interfaces consistent. Consistency is an essential property of good UI. Consistent
design is intuitive design. Consistency is one of the strongest contributors to usability and
learnability. The main idea of consistency is the idea of transferable knowledge

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QUESTION TWO (25 MARKS)

a. With proper justification, explain a suitable application in which each of the following interfaces is
preferred over the others for web application usability factors: -
i. Multimedia Interface. Audio sound is an effective multimedia application. Select types of
information can only be conveyed only through sound. Audio sound helps strengthen the viewer’s
consideration of the information and helps generate a positive impact more than any other
medium of multimedia.
ii. Wearable Interface. Interactivity, Web design and wearable technology have a lot to do with each
other than we thought. User experience is the deciding factor for the success of a website or
application. The seamless navigation, easy-to-use interface, flawless design, and accessibility of a
website or application are crucial for making a long-lasting impression on the customers.
iii. Augmented Reality Interface. Augmented Reality or AR is a set of computer-generated
information that can be displayed in wearable devices and mobile devices over
products/items/places in the real world.
AR technologies will get you the most real-time user’s feedback on what they are doing with the
app.
iv. Command-Line Interface. This interface requires user to punch in commands for example an
ATM machine.
v. Voice-based Interface. This uses voice recognition system to interact with the user. For example,
iPhone SIRI application
b. Discuss the four guiding principles when deciding on the interface to use for any given web application.
i. Place Users at the Center. As always, the first UI design principle is to focus on people. A good
user interface is easy and natural to use, avoids confusing the user, and does what the user needs. 
ii. Strive for Clarity. The purpose of the user interface is to allow the user to interact with the
website or application (or, more generally in broader design, any product). Avoid anything that
confuses people or doesn’t help them interact. 
iii. Minimize Actions and Steps Per Screen. Streamline tasks and actions so they can be done in as
few steps as possible. Each screen should have one primary focus. For example, the purpose of
this blog is for you to read and, hopefully, enjoy it and learn from it. It’s not to share it on Twitter
or email a colleague (though please do if you find it valuable enough to share). 

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 iv. Be Consistent. creates familiarity, and familiar interfaces are naturally more usable. How
frustrating would it be to get behind the wheel of a car and the brake is on the right and the
accelerator on the left? Or filling in a Web form with the “Submit” button in red and the “Delete”
button in green. 
c. Using an appropriate example, differentiate between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) in
relation to web application design.
 User Interface (UI) design refers to the creation and design of the elements that a user will interact with
when using a website or service. This could include buttons, sliders, graphics, or other interactive
elements. UI designers work on specific pages and elements within a product or service.
While
User Experience (UX) design is the process of designing products that are easy and fun to use. UX
designers take a high-level view of a user’s journey throughout their time spent with a product or service
and focus on making sure each user finds value from their interactions with a brand, product, or service.
UX and UI design are related but not exactly the same. UX design involves managing the user journey as
they interact with a product or service, while UI design focuses on the actual construction of that product
or service’s interface. UI design is usually considered part of the UX design process. 
d. “One cannot design a user experience, only design for a user experience”. Discuss this HCI notion with a
relevant example.

User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and
relevant experiences to users. UX design involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and
integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.

Designing an experience includes not only making the software easy to use but also designing the other
experiences related to the product, for example, the marketing campaign, the packaging and after-sales
support. Most importantly, UX design is concerned with delivering solutions that address pain points and
needs. After all, no one will use a product that serves no purpose.

A UX designer attempts to answer the question: "How can we make the experience of interacting with a
computer, a smartphone, a product, or a service as intuitive, smooth and pleasant as possible?"

In particular, one cannot design a sensual experience, but only create the design features that can evoke it.”

For example, when using a physical device, such as a computer mouse, we can control some aspects of the
product that influence whether the user enjoys looking at, feeling and holding it:

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The way it fits in their hand. Is it snug? Is it too big and cumbersome?

QUESTION THREE (25 MARKS)

a. The DECIDE framework can be used to guide evaluation, explain what is involved in each step of the
framework.
I. Determine the goal This phase is the phase where to clarify the user needs. You must establish what
are the goals wanted to be achieved in the design of the proposed system.
II. Explore the question. To be able to achieve the goal identified in the first stage, you need to find a
way to achieve it by asking question that can lead a way on how to achieve the desired goal. 
III. Choose the evaluation paradigm & activities Once identified the goals and listing the entire main
question, need to choose the techniques based on it. Here combination of techniques can be used to
obtain different perspective/ view towards the design.
IV. Identify the practical issues. You Need to identify the practical issues before starting to do the
evaluation process.

b. James is designing a user interface and has decided to implement the Shneiderman’s Eight Golden Rules
of Interface Design, briefly examine these golden rules basing on a case study of designing an interface
of a system developed for IT experts?
Strive for consistency by utilizing familiar icons, colors, menu hierarchy, call-to-actions, and when
designing similar situations and sequence of actions.

Enable frequent users to use shortcuts. With increased use comes the demand for quicker methods of
completing tasks. For example, both Windows and Mac provide users with keyboard shortcuts for
copying and pasting, so as the user becomes more experienced, they can navigate and operate the user
interface more quickly and effortlessly

Offer informative feedback. The user should know where they are at and what is always going on.

Design dialogue to yield closure. Don’t keep your users guessing. Tell them what their action has led
them to.

Offer simple error handling. No one likes to be told they’re wrong, especially your users.

Permit easy reversal of actions. Designers should aim to offer users obvious ways to reverse their actions. 

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 Support internal locus of control. Allow your users to be the initiators of actions. Give users the sense that
they are in full control of events occurring in the digital space. 

Reduce short-term memory load. Human attention is limited, and we are only capable of maintaining
around five items in our short-term memory at one time. Therefore, interfaces should be as simple as
possible with proper information hierarchy and choosing recognition over recall.

c. Interfaces go through series of evaluations before it is released for implementation, from your own
understanding what is the purpose of evaluation in in relation to system usability?
System evaluation is required to assess whether the system is meeting the objectives it was designed to
meet, such as: Controlling access; Identifying people in specific areas; Detecting unauthorized entry.
d. From your own view differentiate between user interface evaluation through experts’ analysis and
Evaluation through user participation by giving examples where each can be applied?
Expert evaluations are formative evaluations performed by designers and usability experts. Expert
evaluations are effective because they take less time to prepare and do not require gathering users.
Consequently expert evaluations can occur at any time during the design process.  If evaluations are
made by the designers, they need to have the unusual skill to evaluate their own work.  Self-evaluation
requires separating ego from work and the ability to have multiple perceptions of the designs.
Consequently, designer may hire consultants to make evaluations.  There are two popular types of expert
reviews; Cognitive Walkthrough and Heuristic Evaluations.
Evaluation through expert analysis means that an expert is hired to look through the entire system for
errors while
Evaluation through user participation.
 Evaluation through user participation, that is, evaluation that involves the people for whom the system is
intended: the users. User-based evaluation techniques include: experimental methods, observational methods,
questionnaires, interviews, and physiological monitoring methods
It’s where you roll out the system to users and ask for their feedback depending on their experience on
interacting with the system.

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e. Analyse the Cognitive walkthrough: looking at what usability attribute it is focused, when it can be
applied, who is involved in evaluation and what outcomes can be obtained.
Cognitive walkthroughs are used to examine the usability of a product. They are designed to see whether or
not a new user can easily carry out tasks within a given system. It is a task-specific approach to usability (in
contrast to heuristic evaluation which is a more holistic usability inspection). The idea is that if given a
choice, most users prefer to do things to learn a product rather than to read a manual or follow a set of
instructions.

A cognitive walkthrough begins by defining the task or tasks that the user would be expected to carry out. It
is these tasks that the cognitive walkthrough will examine for usability—any tasks that can be performed in
the product but are not subject to a cognitive walkthrough will not normally be assessed during the process.

f. Write short notes on each of the following approaches to evaluation through expert analysis: -

i. Cognitive walkthrough.
This refers to a task-based usability-inspection method that involves a cross-functional team of
reviewers walking through each step of a task flow and answering a set of prescribed questions,
with the goal of identifying those aspects of the interface that could be challenging to new users.

ii. Heuristic evaluation.

This is a usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design
so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process.
iii. Model-based evaluation.
This is using a model of how a human would use a proposed system to obtain predicted usability
measures by calculation or simulation. 
iv. The use of previous work in evaluation.
Using the findings from evaluation and research studies conducted on the same or closely related
areas

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QUESTION FOUR (25 MARKS)

a. Assuming you have been asked to lead a team of interaction designers tasked to develop an interactive
virtual cultural museum for Uganda. Answer the following in the context of this task before you: -

i. State the different skills set (expertise) needed in your team for this interactive application.

1) Agile working.
2) Communicating between the technical and non-technical.
3) Community collaboration.
4) Digital perspective.
5) Evidence- and context-based design.
6) Leadership and guidance.
7) Prototyping.
8) Coding skills

ii. Formulate a question for each of the six usability goals which will help your team achieve
usability
of the intended application.

1. Easy to learn.

“Can users figure out what to do by exploring the interface?”

This goal refers to how easy a system is to learn. When a product is designed, it must be evaluated to see if
anyone can easily learn how to use the new product.

People encounter different products every day, and how easily one can learn to use a product is an indication
of its usability.
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2. Safe to use

“What kind of errors can users make and how can they recover from the mistake?”

Digital products must be designed to ensure user safety and security. No harm should come to the user from
using the product.

User identity and data should be safeguarded to protect them from being misused. Moreover, the safety of a
product can also involve ensuring recovery from failure or errors.

3. Effective to use

“Can users use the system to do the work they need to do?”

The effectiveness goal refers to how good a system is at doing what it is supposed to do. This particular goal
evaluates the solution that a product provides, as compared to the identified problem. The effectiveness goal
ensures that the product solves the problem for which it was designed.

4. Efficient to use

 Can experience users be productive using the system?” 

The efficiency goal refers to the way a system supports users in carrying out tasks. This goal helps to ensure
the product performs the task in a way that minimizes time and other essential resources that may be
required.

For example, an application designed for transactions must not experience a lot of downtime while
processing transactions.

5. Good utility

“Does the system provide all the functionality that users needs?”

This goal refers to the extent to which the system provides the correct functionality so that users can do what
they need or want to do.

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The user should never run into any situation where there is no appropriate option to carry out the desired
action. An example would be to include back and next options to enable a user to navigate to the previous
action.

6. Memorable

“What kind of support does the system have for remembering how to do tasks, especially infrequent tasks?”

How easy a system is to remember to use is a key goal in usability. This goal ensures a system can be used
over and over again with ease once a user has learned to use it, and does not require the user to relearn how
to use the product each time.

This goal calls for simplicity in design to allow users to build effective recall for the product.

iii. State the desirable aspects of this application as well as the undesirable aspects that must be
avoided to meet the user experience goals.

 Simplicity : User Interface design should be simple. ...

 Consistency The user interface should have a more consistency. ...
 Intuitiveness
 Prevention
 Graphical User Interface Design

b. Using an appropriate example, discuss each of the following principles of interaction design:
i. Visibility. This means arranging and presenting the design elements in a manner that users can
easily understand and interact with.
ii. Feedback. For every action that the user makes, the interface should give a meaningful reaction.
For example, the ATM machine prompts you to select the Language of your choice, amount of
money you want to withdraw, and whether you will need a printout of a transaction receipt.
iii. Constraints. This is about determining ways of how to restrict possibilities of user’s interaction to
ensure that they only see specific things as per their preference.
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 iv. Consistency. The interface should be uniform throughout. For example, an ATM machine, any
modification, or changes done shouldn’t change the appearance of the system. This will enable
easy navigation, understanding and easy usage. This will eliminate misuse of the interface.
v. Affordance. This term used to refer to attributes of an objects which show users the action they
want to take.

c. With a relevant example, differentiate between accessibility and inclusiveness as applied to interaction
design: -
Accessible design focuses on personalizing products for specific people with disabilities while Inclusive
design is a larger spectrum, which focuses on building for everyone. For example, it considers the
location, situational handicaps, perspectives of people, and anything else that may impairability. While
Inclusive design describes methodologies to create products that understand and enable people of all
backgrounds and abilities. Inclusive design may address accessibility, age, culture, economic situation,
education, gender, geographic location, language, and race.
It empowers designers to create products whose experiences serve as many people as possible

d. State three advantages of understanding users from an interaction designer perspective.

I. It enables you integrate all their needs into the system
II. Enables you rectify the mistakes that you had previously made.
III. Users get acquainted with the interface even before the final deployment of the system.

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