LIS 506 Final Project

The final project will be a team project. Each team should contain 3-4 members. You can organize by yourself or will be assigned to a group. You will develop an informational web site around: either a technology topic selected by your team, or a real organization, program, company or group. For the first option, whatever technology topic you decide to do, you are encouraged to choose something that can be applicable to your professional career, if possible, a site that you (or others) will continue to use after the course is over or that will enhance your professional work. Common technologies covered during the semester should not be considered as an appropriate topic.

You need to display the following skills through the website:

• Good design of the website, clear layout, easy navigation.
• Use of a variety of features and HTML tags.
• Use of web search engines to identify resources (information, tutorial, icons, ...) to be included in or connected to the website.

Projects are required to include significant real content; mock-ups that contain only a limited quantity of content for demonstration purposes would not be acceptable.

After your initial work, you are required to conduct a usability test of the website. You need to design the test, recruit appropriate users, conduct the test and write a usability test report as a memo of at least 2 pages addressed to me as your project supervisor. The report will cover:

• test materials (i.e., what site and which sections of the site you tested and why you chose to test those sections)
• test design (i.e., when, where, and how you conducted the test and why you conducted it as you did)
• test results (i.e., the specific findings, including successes and failures in visitors' navigating the site and locating information)
• interpretation of results, including specific revisions you will make to your site as a consequence of your findings

After you make all the improvements, you are required to publish the website publicly.

As part of this project you are required to give a presentation to the class (15 min). Your presentation should cover two parts:

1. A presentation about your website. Go over the Website; use it as a tool to give a brief introduction to the technology or the organization to the class. Imagine that the class members are the target users of your website.
2. A PowerPoint presentation about the project which includes:
   • an introduction to your team and the work each team meber performed
   • an overview of the selected topic, the reason of the selection, the process, how the work is done, and the usability test.

Final deliveries include the usability test report and the public accessible website. In total, the project is worth 30% of your final grade.

Other options: please talk to the instructor if you would like to do a different type of project.

Timeline

May 27: self-organization of project teams due
June 1: finalization of project teams
June 3: topic proposal due
June 22: project presentation
June 24: project release date