Your Task

Following Exercise #1, your task will be to present a really short design critique of a digital library interface (or OPAC, library web site, etc.). The critique should focus either on positive or on negative side. One or two of you will EACH prepare a critique for an assigned week (the number of critiques and their frequency will depend on the number of students in the class - each of you should individually prepare at least one critique per semester). After asking for volunteers, I will assign others to particular weeks when you will do your design critique. You will be able to express your preference, if you anticipate that your schedule is going to be tight during certain weeks.

Your critique should contain the following elements:

• Selection of an interface as an example of a good or bad design (include its URL, others need to be able to view it);
• Support for your critique - use design principles, heuristics, information design, Gestalt principles, color guidelines, etc. The idea is to analyze the design from different perspectives as you learn about them in this course. Please use them selectively, focusing on most important aspects, i.e. please do not use all of you've learned so far;
• If possible and applicable, make suggestions on how to improve the design and add a short description of design tradeoffs.

Submission

• There is no formal submission requirement for this exercise (i.e. there is no file upload via dropbox). You are expected to describe your choice of a good/bad interface design and to lead a follow-up discussion. We will use eCollege threaded discussion for this exercise (look for Design Critique under each unit, starting with week 4).

Assessment criteria:

• Student who prepares the critique and leads the discussion gets 5%. Other students are expected to participate, particularly if they do not agree with the arguments. But I do not expect everybody to participate in all of these discussions.
  

Due dates are posted on the Assignments page