HTW Berlin This sign in a hotel bathroom in Amsterdam demonstrates a basic failure of usability of the shower. HTW Berlin
Fachbereich 4
Internationaler Studiengang
Internationale Medieninformatik (Bachelor)
WT2: Usability
Winter Term 2017/18
Exercise 1 : Heuristic Site Evaluation I

We are going to try our first exercise without much knowledge of how to do usability tests.

Choose your group today (max. 4 persons), you will remain in this group all semester. Choose a name and a group speaker, and email the names of everyone in the group, the team name (for example: UseIts) and the name of the group speaker me right now. No grades can be given for groups that have not registered!


Choose a company from the following list:
    • Intel
    • Apple
    • IBM
    • Daimler AG
    • Sony
    • Microsoft
    • Time-Warner
    • General Motors
    • Aetna Life Insurance
    • Rover
    • ICL
    • Barclays
    • The Times
    • British Telecom
    • Glaxo Wellcome
    • Prudential
    • TESCO
    • Cable & Wireless

1. Assume that you are journalists writing an article about this company. Can you find the main company site? Can you verify the spelling of the name of the president of the company? Can you find the name and the telephone number of someone in the PR department? How many employees does the company have? How much did they sell last year? What are their major products? Assuming your article is about some alleged environmental problem: do they have a published environmental policy?

Don't just click around hoping to find something. Keep track of the number and the names of the pages you had to visit in order to obtain this information (exact URLs, please!): What links did you follow? How deep in the hierarchy did you have to go? How many times did you have to backtrack? How long did you have to wait for pictures/videos to download? Can you print the texts? What is your general feeingl about the site, is it easy to navigate? It might help to split up into two pairs, one person detailing the path and the other doing the clicking. Then compare notes with each other.

2. Now assume that you want a job with the company. Can you find specific job openings? Can you find a name and telephone number of someone with whom to talk? Does the company offer any special benefits? Detail as above.

3. If you have time, assume you are an investor. Can one purchase stock in the company? You want to check the return on investment for last year. Did the company pay shareholders a dividend? How much? Did the company acquire any other companies last year? Who are the major shareholders in the company? Can you find any of this information anywhere else? Detail as above.

Spend only the amount of time that we have in class on looking for the above information. Prepare a detailed, professional report. Each team member submits a copy of the report to the Moodle room.

If you are done early, try to imagine another target user of the site. What kinds of information could they be looking for? Detail a scenario as above and the search you had to do to find the information.

Some rights reserved. CC-BY-SA 2017 Debora Weber-Wulff (weberwu@htw-berlin.de)