FORAMTIVE EVALUATIONS / ALPHA TESTS will be conducted in class on November 18th.  Attendance for Alpha Testing is mandatory.  Timely attendance and active participation are required.  At the beginning of class, you will submit a hard copy of your questionaire.  This activity is valued at 5% of the course grade.

Using what you have gained from chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the text, you will conduct a first (alpha/formative) usability test on your project site.  This will involve working with subjects and collecting data from their comments and interactions.  In conjuction with this assignment, you will create a questionaire that provides the reviewers with the procedures, exercises, tasks and questions that the reviewers will use during the testing.  Your questionaire should have a minimum of two paths to follow and  three tasks to complete.  There should be at least 35 questions directed at the user's evaluation of the site's appearance and behavior (the "look and feel"), the adequacy of the site (functionality), and the user's opinions of satisfaction as regards the site (usability).

You should bring at least three copies of the form (two for in-class reviewers and one for the instructor - if you want to have a form for yourself, this is a fourth copy).

Each evaluation should take approximately 30 minutes (finishing before 25 minutes would indicate that the review was not as thorough as it should have been) .  Each student will evaluate two other sites and each site will be reviewed by two students.

You are expected to also conduct additional testing either during "open lab" time or outside of class - the in-class testing that will be done on June 24th  is not adequate to truly evaluate where you are and where you need to be with this site.  At the end of each review, all questionaires will be returned to the designer for his or her use in making modifications.

As a follow-on to the formative evaluation, view your own pages on both Netscape and Internet Explorer on both a PC based and a MacIntosh platform.  In your final Usability Report, reference any discrepancies between browsers or operating systems; and describe what you did or will do to assure proper presentation in all environments.  If the site looks the same (or close enough to your "ideal") across all variations, include this information.  View your site under various screen resolutions and note any deformaties or distracting variations in appearance; include these in your final report as well.  Access your site off-campus and note the amount of time it takes to download your site; include this information also.
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Following the formative evaluation and your own technical review,  analyze the results and apply the data collected to make any changes based on the results and recommendations.  Report all of your results and the modifications you did or will make in your final Usability Report.

The completed copies of all formative questionaires are to be turned in with your final usability report at the end of the semester.

IFSM 403 Calendar