Overview

This unit explores the concept of the user experience (UX) and the fundamental importance of UX design in the context of digital advertising and digital marketing. It provides an overview of information architecture, and introduces several key techniques used by UX practitioners, including heuristic evaluation, contextual inquiry, usability testing, A-B testing and multivariate testing. The fundamentals of digital analytics are covered, with a view to how to use analytics to monitor and improve the usability of interactive applications

Teaching periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Describe the concept of usability and user experience
  • Identify the constraints and limitations of users in general, and appraise the needs of target users in particular
  • Generate analytics reports based on user data in a dedicated web analytics environment
  • Design and administer various tests that can be used to evaluate usability

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Face to Face Contact (Phasing out)
Lecture
1.00 12 weeks 12
Face to Face Contact (Phasing out)
Tutorial
2.00 12 weeks 24
Specified Learning Activities (Phasing out)
Various
8.00 12 weeks 96
Unspecified Learning Activities (Phasing out)
Independent Learning
1.50 12 weeks 18
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Assignment 1Individual 35% 2,4 
Assignment 2Group 50% 1,2,3,4 
PresentationGroup 15% 1,2,3,4 

Content

  • Introduction to usability
  • Understanding the user
  • Heuristic evaluation
  • Information architecture
  • Prototyping and usability
  • Usability testing
  • A-B and multivariate testing
  • Gathering and processing meaningful analytics data
  • Web analytics reporting to measure interactions between users and web applications
  • Analytics and the user experience

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.