Post Exam Oct 2010 INF320E

I am not sure how the hell a paper can be so misleading & test nothing and still stress you with 800 pages! what is that about, we have other subjects to. We have reached a mature stage with Unisa and this is what they throw at us for what? to not let us graduate. shame on you - this course is ridiculous and small minded - sure there will be many failures!

I am not exactly sure what you are going on about. I expected much much worse and was pleasantly surprised by the exam we got.

The paper wasn't so bad. And If you summarized the work during the year you would have realized that there wasn't much in those 800 pages. I think my notes total maybe like 35 pages

I have to agree with Cev and Marthinus. That paper was magical compared with the others written so far. I think my notes were 50-odd pages and served me well.

My prediction = 59% - lets see how close when the results are out.

I faulted on

1. usability goals - mixed-up utility with effectiveness
2. very lite on the problems the 60 years old would experience (my mom is 65 and owns 3 cell phones and uses them like a teenager - so wtf)
3. jordan's pleasure model - couldn't recall ideo-pleasure and f'uk psycho-pleasure
4. lite on prototype (low/high fidelity) advantages and disadvantages
5. lite on "identify practical issues" part of the DECIDE framework
6. Not sure what last two questions actually wanted from me... I took much of the book's preface as the guide to answering these two

I agrree with justin I think the last part of question 3 was mnore of an open ended question as well as question. 2.2 and the second part of question 1

I left out the pleasure model and hierarchical evaluation questions. Otherwise, I thought it was ok. To be honest, I didnt read the pleasure model section because I thought that there were more important things to ask about.

In question 1 I started writing about user experience goals, but soon reread the question and saw it was wanting usability goals.

The last question wanted you to compare the two views of HCI and reason which one you thought was aligned to the book. I felt the second view was the view wanted, because the first view down played HCI and said it was very narrow in scope.

2 marks for the prototype question was ridiculous. A cellphone has two interface design aspect. The OS, and the handset.

Regarding the cellphone for the elderly question, I took the elderly meaning closer to 80. And I based my answer on this phone ( http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=3212 )
which I have looked at before, purely out of interest. Note the big buttons, think about what interface a screen like that could show (and functionality. You wont get all manner of fancy features on this phone).
A simple design like this will be easy to test extensively (as opposed to a smartphone, which a new bug will always be found), and thus will never need to be updated to a better working version (IE. Firmware).

I remembered the emotional model perfectly I based my answers on that with a little guesswork on the names of the items, but I reckon I'll get a few marks there.

The rest of the paper was quite smooth sailing after that, apart from not remembering a few points in the heuristic evaluation (like the process, and the web heuristics - which are basically the same as the others).

Scag, I see you talking about Hierarchical Evaluation, you mean heuristics right? I can't remember seeing anything about HTA.

Yes, heuristics. Didnt study that in depth. Dont judge me.

I thought the exam was ok- I think it's the only exam so far that I've found I could answer the questions with confidence.
Unfortunately i spent a lot of time writing things for question one... so i ran out of time at the end... I didn't answer the last question about the broad idea and narrow idea of HCI- I just answered broad for both but didn't provide explanation.
When I ran out of time, I didn't even get to check through my paper fully- so i just hope I numbered everything correctly lol (paranoid....)

I did miss a number of things in the questions- like I could not get the heuristics question completely correct. I knew the heuristics, got part of the steps correctly, but didn't get heuristics for web - what was the fouth part of the question? I can't remember.
Also, only got parts of the pleasure model and practical issues for DECIDE correct...

Anyway, it was good nonetheless.

I also wrote a lot of stuff, for very few marks.

Regarding numbering, the last question in the paper was not numbered. The question before it had 3.1, with i,ii sub questions. Then the last question had no reference to 3.2, but had i and ii :p

The practical issues mentioned for the DECIDE framework in the textbook are merely examples. If you thought up of your own practical issues that are valid, it would be fine.

I thought the paper was pretty OK to say the least. As for Jordan's pleasure, did not see that anywhere on my book (so it caught me off-guard).
Heristics was OK, they just twisted the way they phrased the questions but I thought they have just asked for principles.
Low/High fedility prototype, very simple too.
DECIDE framework, I expected that very same question "practical issues"
Last two questions, well I'd say application of theory so part marks are possible.

It was the only paper I wrote and came out confident, unlike COS2144 and COS211X but nonetheless I am positive. HCI is quite an interesting subject, don't you guys think? I mean it makes a great deal of sense and one could specialise on it.