Usability Engineering: E-Textbook Revamping
Type
Usability Engineering
Skills
Usability Engineering, User Interface/ User Experience, Digital Product, Interaction Design
YEAR
2024
- Design, prototype and evaluate an e-textbook.
- Design of user tasks from prescribed user goals.
- Create user interface(UI) to showcase functions and user flows.
In the course of Usability Engineering in University of Sydney, we are tasked to create a very new form of e-textbook with features not available in conventional e-textbooks. It is for a course that helps students learn about nutrition. This is an important topic since many Australians, especially young adults of the typical age of university students, have poor nutrition knowledge and practices. It could be used for a breadth course at a university or it could be used in a course for students of nutrition or public health.
This demo work is awarded as 9.5/10 and the report 14.25/15.
This project focused on designing a user-centered interface tailored to the needs of our persona, with prescribed user goals. We translated these into concrete user tasks, ensuring alignment with the intended user experience. Early prototypes evolved based on Think-Aloud and Cognitive Walkthrough evaluations, which identified key usability issues. The Think-Aloud study, conducted with five users across 10 tasks, revealed both strengths and weaknesses, captured through performance metrics and satisfaction surveys (UMUX-lite, SEQ). The Cognitive Walkthrough further refined task flow and interaction, with annotated screenshots highlighting improvements. Overall, our iterative process improved the usability of the final interface, though challenges in task alignment and population sampling suggest further testing is needed for broader validation.