Checklists

Checklists provide a solid supervision for software designers, developers, and testers to find ideas and to evaluate products. Looking at a checklist early can avoid much trouble and additional expenses and may also generate new ideas. Checklists are a valuable tool for quick evaluation to eradicate obvious mistakes.

Typically, checklists are created by IT vendors for their own products or also by other organizations with the necessary technical competence (e.g., academia, consortia, and government agencies). These checklists can be particularly helpful to small organizations and to individuals with limited resources for validating their software product against particular requirements. Checklists usually summarize a lot of practical experience and can contain valuable tips or suggestions.

HaptiMap context-based checklist

How will your application work in the following conditions?

Non-optimal lighting (e.g. bright sunlight), or the user has or wants to look elsewhere (while crossing a street, negotiating rough terrain, etc).

Noisy environment (e.g. in a crowd, by a busy street, at train station, at festival or fair, etc) or an environment where sounds are not suitable (e.g. meeting, concert, theater, bird-spotting – not to frighten the birds etc)

Situation which limits your ability to touch the device - cold hands, using gloves (cold weather or keeping the device in a pocket or a bag) or external vibrations/shaking makes it hard to sense the feedback.

Situation which limits your ability to manipulate the device like having to hold something else in one or both hands (eg. umbrella, bag, take away coffee, ice cream, pram, child etc) or shaking/vibrations that make it difficult to interact.

Context that requires attention (eg. other people, traffic, sights, scenery etc)

See also the Dynamic User Experiences (the context cards can be used to make a more detailed context checklist).

IBM

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