What you owe someone you test a button on, how to credit a button that isn't yours, and what happens if a deadline is going to be a problem.

Policies and support#

Testing your button on other people#

Two of the three assessments ask you to put a working button in front of someone else and log what happens. Tell that person what you’re testing before they press anything, and get their agreement to be tested. Don’t record or submit anything that identifies them without asking first — what your submission needs to show is what happened, not who it happened to.

Testing under a changed condition#

Some work asks you to test the same control under a changed condition — a different reach, no visual acknowledgement, keyboard-only activation. Treat the changed condition as a property of the one button in front of you, not as a survey of who a design excludes in general. Log the specific mechanism that broke — reach, target size, timing window, acknowledgement channel, activation method — not a general impression that the button was harder to use.

Using and crediting someone else’s button#

Several assessments ask you to name one real button that isn’t yours. Say where you found it: the make and model of a physical control, or the site, app, and screen for a digital one. If a photo or screenshot isn’t one you took yourself, say whose it is. The dissection is your work; the object under it usually isn’t.

Submission and deadlines#

Each assessment page states its own due date and time. If you expect a deadline to be difficult to meet, use whatever course or university extension or support process is available, and do so before the deadline where possible. Specific penalties for late work are not set by this page — they follow whatever course- or university-level policy governs this assessment.

Academic integrity#

Dissect and build your own button, from your own testing. Two students independently choosing the same real-world button is fine; reusing someone else’s dissection, testing log, or rationale is not. If a way of describing a button’s failure came from a specific source — a person, a paper, a thread — say where it came from.

Getting help#

For a question about the course itself, email the convenor. For feedback on work in progress, ask during the session it belongs to rather than by email — contact details for both are on the People page.