In week 8, we paid attention to the following questions:

What does it mean to evaluate a work, what are the tools, how is a project fitting its intentions? Is evaluation even necessary in the context of design?

Without evaluation, there might not be that much success in a project. As we learned during our “interaction Design Process”-Class, it is a fundamental part of every design process. It is something omnipresent in the whole process. Evaluation can take place before, during, and after a project.

Evaluation can be very creative in its process because it mostly hasn’t the approach to be scientific. (body-storming, talking with peoples, playing games, etc.) I learned during our class that evaluation helps also do take a step back and rethink the process and decide the further steps.

The evaluation confirms that the product will work as it intends to work, or whether some simplifications or adaptation is required. It involves collecting and analyzing information about the results of a concept and its characteristics. First of all, you have to know what you want to find out and want you would like to solve. There are different ways of evaluation; often, they are combined to achieve the best outcome.

Readings

Bardzell, J., Bolter, J., & Löwgren, J. 2010. “Interaction criticism: three readings of an interaction design, and what they get us”. In Interactions. 17:2. 32–37.

Greenberg, S., & Buxton, B. 2008. “Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time)”. In Proceedings of CHI ’08.

Nørgaard, M., & Hornbæk, K. 2006. “What do usability evaluators do in practice?: an explorative study of think ­aloud testing”. In Proceedings of DIS ‘06.

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. 2002. “Introducing Evaluation”. In Interaction Design. Wiley.

Sengers, P., & Gaver, B. 2006. “Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation”. In Proceedings of DIS ‘06.