COMP 171 Spring 2008: Assignment 1

Analyzing a product from the user's perspective

Choose a software product - from the desktop, web or embedded platforms - that you think is well designed and analyze it. First, briefly describe the product. Submit a brief report 1-2 pages max, beginning with a description of your product, then briefly answering each of the questions below:

• User analysis: Whom do you see the target users for this product? What are their demographic and ethnographic characteristics (age, attitude towards technology, skills)?
• Task analysis: What are the important tasks for this product? What are the user's overall tasks or goals are when using this product? What parts of the overall task does the system (the software) perform? What parts does the user perform?
• Describe the context, situations, or environments in which users use the product.
• Conceptual design: Describe the conceptual model in this product (key objects, attributes, relationships, actions).
• Design metaphors: If applicable, describe any metaphors used in the design. For example, the desktop metaphor for file management treats computer files like paper documents.
• Describe how you feel the product is well or poorly suited for its users' goals.
• Describe how you might improve on the product.
• If you were going to develop a test procedure for testing the usability of this product, describe how you would go about doing this after you improved it, to see if your improvements were helpful?