CMSI 370
IN T E R A C T I O N DE S I G N
Fall 2007
Assignment 1101
Alright, time to work on a Swing program with some genuine functionality, which will also teach you a little
bit about usability testing.
Not for Submission
Read Chapter 7 from Shneiderman/Plaisant.
For Submission
You should each find a menus directory on your re-
spective homework/cmsi370 CVS depots. Weāll use
this menus code in two ways for this assignment.
Menu Selection Experiment
Use menus to conduct an efficiency and error rate
experiment among three menu styles: pull-down
menus from an arbitrary location, pull-down
menus from the top of the screen, and pop-up
menus at or near the current mouse location.
Perform a series of menu selection tests using
menus, gather the resulting data, and draw a conclu-
sion about the relative efficiency and error rates of
the three types of menus. A sample menu setup is
included, but do feel free to change that menu to
your liking (or even to test different menu fixtures).
Work on this as a group, and involve as many peo-
ple as are willing to participate. Submit the data
and your analysis of the data on hardcopy.
Implementation Note ! ! As written, pull-down
menus from the top of the screen can only be
achieved by running menus on Mac OS X, with the
apple.laf.useMenuBar system property set to ātrueā
(with the double quotes) via the āD command line
switch or any other property-setting mechanism.
User Interface Improvements
Implement the following improvements to the
menus user interface. You may work on this in
groups of any size, but make sure to commit the new
code in each of your CVS repositories.
ā¢Convert the session collection display within the
subject view from a JList to a JTable
ā¢Implement export to a text file, including a dialog
box that appears to request the export fileās name
and location
ā¢Change the button bar at the bottom into a drag-
gable and detachable toolbar (i.e., JToolBar)
ā¢Add support for multiple test subjects: show a
subject list first, allowing the user to add or re-
move subjects; a user can then āopenā or select
a subject to show that subjectās view
ā¢Make sure that Open Session only produces one
session data window (i.e., if a session data view is
already open for that session, just bring that win-
dow to the front)
ā¢Implement a double-click, such that double-
clicking on a session does the same thing as se-
lecting that session and invoking Open Session
How to Turn it In
Submit the results of your menu selection experi-
ment as a group report on hardcopy.
Commit your improved menus code to your respec-
tive menus directories in CVS.
Extra Credit
You will get extra credit if your new version of
menus includes one or more of these user interface
enhancements:
ā¢Cross-platform border menu ā As mentioned, top-
of-the-screen pull-down menus can currently be
accomplished only on Mac OS X using the
apple.laf.useMenuBar system property. Make this
capability completely cross-platform.
ā¢Customizable menu fixtures ā Implement a mecha-
nism that allows the menu fixture (i.e., the set of
menus used for testing) to be customized, such
as through an external file or a built-in menu fix-
ture editor.