EE408 Assignment 3 - Evaluating a Research Prototype for GUI Bloopers

EE408 Assignment 3: Evaluating a Research Prototype for GUI Bloopers

4%

Due: 10:00 PM, Friday October 31.

1. Read carefully the following chapters or sections:

Chapter 3: Navigation Bloopers. (focusing on bloopers 13, 14, 15, and 18)
Chapter 4: Textual Bloopers.
Chapter 5: Graphic Design and Layout Bloopers.

2. Download this zip file, which contains an Eclipse project named LAPIS, and import the project into your workspace.

LAPIS is a research prototype of a web browser/text editor that demonstrates several novel capabilities for pattern matching and text editing. Details about the LAPIS project can be read here.

For this homework, you are going to

run and study LAPIS to an extent that you know how to use it, and

evaluate its GUI design from the perspective of the 38 bloopers that you have seen so far in Chapters 2-5.

You are to submit, by the above deadline, a report that itemizes a list of GUI deficiencies or usability concerns. You are required to provide screen shots when they are helpful for clear illustration. Your report will be used to advise a LAPIS maintenance team on the GUI issues that they should address in their future reengineering and enhancement effort. This report is worth of 4%.

Note about the LAPIS source code

Although you may download the LAPIS code directly from MIT, I suggest you use the version I provided above on this page. The reason is that the MIT version uses the keyword enum as both variable names and package names. These uses of enum were allowed in and before Java 1.4 but prohibited since Java 1.5. In the version I provided here, I have done the necessary conversion for numerous uses of enum as variable names and one use as part of a package name. In theory, you can do the conversion yourselves, but using mine may save you some time.

Marking Criteria:

(1) All written answers must be free of grammatical errors and misspellings. If not, you may lose 1 mark.

(2) I am looking for instances of specific bloopers. If such a blooper is found, you should explicitly point out its number, in addition to commenting on its details.

There are also aspects of LAPIS GUI design that are questionable from an interaction design point of view, but do not necessarily fall in the scope of any particular blooper. In any such case, a detailed discussion is needed on why the existing design choice is questionable and what would be the right alternative. For each blooper, or aspects of concern, that you miss or wrongly accuse, you may lose 0.5%. Maximally, you may lose 4 marks.

Email me (dhou at clarkson edu) your answers. Put "EE408 Assignment 3" into the subject line of your email.

This is the last EE408 homework.