The first major course a CMU HCI Masters student takes is HCI Methods. This is not just a class. This is a boot camp in the usability evaluation methods that the Human-Computer Interaction Institute considers professionally necessary. Professors Bonnie John and Christine Neuwirth drilled us in the valuable skills of heuristic evaluation, contextual inquiry and modeling, cognitive walkthrough, think-aloud usability testing, and GOMS. We learned to build communicative models such as affinity diagrams, Beyer & Holtzblatt's five types of contextual models, and to work on interdisciplinary teams.		After we studied these skills in class, we went on to apply and practice them by first researching and then redesigning the Blogger web logging interface. My team's design identified and corrected a number of usability breakdowns in the experience of the users. It was both more efficient for expert users and more intuitive for novices by extending and consolidating oversight and control of the interface. jackbeaton at gmail.com | 717.404.5782
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