This was the 'lab' portion of this course, in which we put the methods we'd learned into practice.

We began by doing contextual inquiries with the current website. We observed user behavior and noted all breakdowns. Contextual inquiries are generally done in the workplace, with a piece of software the user is familiar with; however, very few people had actually used this system before, so most of our users were novices.

When we learned a new HCI method in class, such as heuristic evaluation or cognitive walkthrough, we then used it for this project.

Towards the end of the semester, we took all that we had learned and made a prototype for a new version of REAL. I was in charge of the visual design, using photoshop to create pictures of each page. One of my classmates combined these into our prototype (opens in a new window). Using this, we did several think-alouds with users, enabling us to refine our interface.

Further details can be found in our final report:
REAL Final Report (4.2MB)