CIM 612 — Information Design and Usability Testing
Communications and Information Management
3 Credits
The digital information age requires professionals to understand and apply design and testing practices to any information disseminated via print, audio, Internet, and other digitized media. Thus, this course enables students to design information effectively for a variety of these media, to present findings about a document or other mediated message by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data of real users, and to identify and specify user needs or information requirements and their practical consequences. Students learn to use respected testing methods, research approaches, and practices related to the design of text and other forms of messages communicated through electronic media. As part of this course, students learn to understand, apply, and present design and usability strategies and practices. As part of the process students work together in testing teams to investigate usability and its practical consequences for information design in regard to hard copy documents, screen displays, presentational materials, and other digitized user interfaces through information systems displays and reports. Students emerge from the course with a hands-on, practical set of tools that only the best communications specialists and researchers know how to use.
Offered
