F26 CS 449 / 649 Week 9

Lecture

• Guest lectures: U. Waterloo HCI Lab PhD Candidates Delara Forghani and Lucas Gomez Tobin

Studio Prep (P9)

• As a team pick two UX flows that you developed in the design session - you will use these to conduct evaluations with your classes. You will be conducting 2 rounds of evaluation with your paper prototype (20-25 minutes each) with your classmates. Come up with a test plan, what tasks will you ask people to do with your prototype? Why these tasks?
• To prepare for the evaluation, your team must:
  1. Create a script of instructions for the facilitator, wizard, participants. For the facilitator, write down a list of questions that the facilitator may ask the participant during an evaluation session. For the wizard, outline the list of participant actions and the appropriate system responses for each action. For the participants, write down the list of tasks they will be asked to perform and some instructions that will explain to them what they will be doing during the paper prototype evaluation session (e.g., think aloud, etc) and why.
  2. Write down the general procedure that the wizard should follow to properly respond to input from a participant. For example, what should the wizard do if the participant does something unexpected? How long should the wizard wait in silence without offering help, when a participant is stuck at a particular step, unable to proceed?
  3. Assign 2 people from your team to conduct the evaluation. Decide on the role(s) each person will take during the evaluation - facilitator, wizard and/or observer. Students who are not conducting the evaluation must serve as testers for other teams, or observers (i.e., note takers) for their own team.
  4. Run a mock evaluation within the team. Make sure you can complete the evaluation within 20-25 minutes. Write down your observations and any changes you made to your paper prototype or evaluation procedure.
• Include a writeup in the design notebook to describe the four parts of the planning process. Bring your paper prototype and scripts to class next week for the evaluation.

Studio Activities

• E1: Low-Fidelity Prototype Evaluation

To Dos (After Studio)

• Complete design notebook entry for E1: Low-Fidelity Prototype Evaluation
• P10: Prepare for next studio

Sources / References

For more information about the studio activity, see the following:

• See Week 7 notes
• 📖 Kate Moran (Nielsen Norman Group): Usability (User) Testing 101 (2026)
• 📖 Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen Norman Group): Thinking Aloud: The #1 Usability Tool (2012)
• 📖 Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen Norman Group): Demonstrate Thinking Aloud by Showing Users a Video (2014)
• 📺 Ellucian UX Research: Demo: How to think aloud while participating in a usability test (2016)
• 📖 Susan Farrell (Nielsen Norman Group): Test Paper Prototypes to Save Time and Money: The Mozilla Case Study (2015)