One of my graduate courses required a group project as part of a block about the Learning Design Studio. Our project developed a Google Site for our work. This is a copy of my contributions to the group effort, reformatted for this website. The project starts here.
Heuristic evaluation form
Thank you for agreeing to help us evaluate our project. Today you will be asked to put yourself in the learner’s seat, review the project, and note any design flaws you perceive.
Introducing the project
We are creating a consortium of aviation museums to provide informal learning opportunities to museum visitors. The museums are physically located in the United States, England, and Japan. With the consortium, museum visitors will be able to experience learning opportunities in all the sister museums.
Our typical visitor wants to learn more about aviation history, but aside from that have a wide demographic. They will be in different countries and have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds; they have varying experiences with formal education; they have different access and abilities with technology; and they hold different jobs. One of our goals is to be able to provide a learning experience to them all.
Your task, as the reviewer
As a reviewer, you will pretend that you are a typical museum visitor. First, look at our list of review criteria. Then, go through the prototype. Use the score sheet to let us know when a review criteria is not met.
The review criteria
Please use these criteria when reviewing the prototype.
1. Learner first
Not all learning activities will be accessible to all visitors, but does every visitor have some activities they can engage in? For example, is there something for:
- People who cannot use the computer, or times when there are computer glitches?
- People with English reading skills below the average for 10 years old?
- People who want a higher-tech learning experience?
- People with gaming experience, and people without gaming experience?
- People with poor fine motor skills?
- People who want to visit replicas of the other museums, and people who don’t want to?
- People who should be shielded from adult content?
- People who do not have a lot of time?
- People who do not have a mobile phone?
2. Problem-based learning
Have we provided the museum visitors with activities that encourage them to solve problems, without providing predefined outcomes?
3. Explaining technology
When our learning solutions are technology based, did we make sure that learners have a way to learn the technology as well as the subject matter at hand?
4. Meaningful modelling of the real world
Does the material use words, metaphors, and symbols that are both accurate for the subject (aviation history) but also accessible to the novice?
5. Understandable navigation
Do you understand where you are contextually within the learning modules? Within the consortium of museums? Is it clear how to navigate?