GR3 - Paper Prototyping

Prototype Photos

Design 1

Prototype Iteration

• Icon Changes:
  • Question Queue: Pack of People -> Question Mark
  • General Stats/FAQ: Question Mark -> Histogram
  • Events: Starburst/Asterisk -> Flip Calendar
• Experiment with new design direction that focuses on a map-based view.
• Make tour guide's name more prominent and persistent.
• Added tour completion time estimates.

Design 2

Briefing

Problem:

• College tourists often have trouble finding campus events/activities, accessing current students for more specific inquiries.
• Tour Guides have to spend time repeatedly answering common questions from tourists which detracts time from the tour.

Goal of the Application:

• Find out about events on campus
• Facilitate interaction between tour guides and tourists
• Facilitate student-tourist interactions
• Find out about general stats/frequently asked general questions easily

Information about you, the User:

• You are a prospective student at CollegeTech University using the application as a tourist.
• You are about to check in/go on a tour at the university.

Scenario Tasks

1. Check in to a tour and Ask a question to the tour guide.
2. Find out the percent of undergraduates that are African-American at the University.
3. Find a greek related event happening today or tomorrow.
4. Find a story relevant to business school and schedule a meetup with a student who wrote a story.
5. Leave feedback for your tour guide.

Observations

Round 1

User 1

Task 1

• Didn't understand the drop down menus on the first page (paper prototyping error)
• Was confused by the title "Tour"

Task 2 

•  Didn't see the affordance to swipe the graphs in the General Stats/FAQs paper the first time he saw the page and tried to navigate it.

Task 3

•  Wanted to see some sort of search option for the events page.

Task 4 

• Didnt want to have to read through stories to find what he was looking for. Thought that if the stories were longer, then instead of scanning the text it would be nice to have some sort of search or filtering option.
• First time around, clicked on the story item rather than the student profile picture to set up a meet up (but it did nothing).
• Liked the big button for schedule a meet up and using a drop down for picking times to meet up.
• Didn’t like the wording “what” on the meetup form
• Was comfortable with giving out his phone number to be contacted by.

Task 5

• Found what he was looking for easily

General Feedback

• Didn’t know if on the Stories page, the story and picture of the student were one item together, or two different items on the page and seperate.
• Didn't see the affordance the first time, but liked how clean it was. 

User 2

Task 1

• Found the wording of the main menu confusing. Didn’t know whether options were college specific or tour specific, but guessed they were college specific.  Felt there was a consistency issue with the check in and main menu (you are checking into a tour, but the options on the main menu are for the college?)
• Clicked on a question text, without realizing it was unclickable.
• Asked the question by re-typing it. Realized it was a queue when it was entered again at the bottom of the list.

Task 2

• Liked the back button at the top of the page
• Felt as though he was getting the hang of navigating the app at this point.
• Unsure of whether he could click the questions on the general stats/FAQs page (inconsistency with the tour page)

Task 3

• Uses google calendar religiously, would like to see a link to add to his google calendar.
• Would want a filter system on the Events page.

Task 4 

• Found the wording of the 'what' field in the pop up to schedule a meetup with a student
• Felt uncomfortable giving out his phone number
• Would prefer a checkbox to choose  whether or not to share the number with the student.   

Task 5

• Found what he was looking for easily

General Feedback

• Guessed afterwards that stories were from students
• Would like some sort of qualifying text for the phone number field so he’d know what the number would be used for
• Would like to see the feedback option be placed in the tour page or on guide's profile

User 3

Task 1

• Unsure about stories being from students or tourists
• Unsure if feedback was to the tour guide or the app itself while scanning through the main menu options
• Decided to go to “Tour” option  to ask a question since it was the first menu option, not because he understood the title "Tour"
• "Home" and "Back" options at the top of the page seem either confusing or redundant
• Assumed picture on the "Tour" page was the tour guide but didn't know for sure (no name with the picture in the prototype)
• Thought that the questions in the queue were pre-chosen by the application or the questions were popular in the past (did not think it was a queue)
• Believed question text was clickable
• After question he typed in moved to the end of the queue, he thought the questions were questions he’d asked in the past (not a queue of questions from the tour group)

Task 2

• Tried to type question into the interface to answer the question
• Remembered there was a General Stats/FAQ page and chose not to use it (would rather stay on Questions page)
• When he looked at the General Stats page, tapped on graph to see next graph 

Task 3

• Found what he was looking for easily

Task 4

• Clicked on user picture, saw the business icon and was confused by what it meant and what the tiles were.
• At the "what" field in the schedule a meetup pop up, put in “I want to schedule a meetup.” Found the question "what" to be redundant.
• Was uncomfortable about giving out phone number.

Task 5

• Saw no way to give her specific feedback, and would like to be able to do that. Would rather do that than use the stars or sliders.

General Feedback

• Business icon image confusing for the business tile
• Qualifying text about phone number would make him feel more comfortable about giving his phone number
• Confused with how “When” option works (What if student can't make time? )
• ”What” field was confusing. A “Why” field would make more sense.
• Inconsistency with text for rest of site was annoying (sometimes it was clickable, sometimes it was not)
• Liked the student meet-ups option, but would be surprised that people would follow through
• Confused with "Events" page: why would people want prospective students at events? 
• Liked "General Stats" page: nice to have that at the touch of your fingers rather than having to navigate to another site
• Worried that as a prospective student, your personal name might be associated with questions you ask on queue, and colleges could see that (for admissions)
• Would rather not check in and would like to see the information for all colleges, even if you're not on a college tour

Round 2

User 1

Task 1

• Forgot to click ok on the initial popup the first time around, then remembered and saw to click there
• Confused about the redrawn pins and what they mean
• On the Tour page, didn't realize that the questions were text and not clickable. Also didn't realize that the list of questions was a queue. 

Task 2

• Instead of looking to the General Stats/FAQs page, wanted to ask everything to the tour guide through the Tour page
• Found General Stats wording ambiguous
• Clicked on dots underneath graph rather than swiping through the graphs

Task 3

• Found what he wanted easily

Task 4

• Was unclear that the pins were indicators of stories. Only clicked on pins when he'd explored everything else on the site.
• Unfortunately pin for management school got covered by the side bar (paper prototype didn't allow for looking around the map irregardless of the side bar).

Task 5

• Found what he wanted easily

General Feedback

• Wanted to know that pins at the beginning were a way to get stories

User 2

Task 1

• Clicked on a question in the queue without realized the questions were text and not clickable
• Didn't realize that the list of questions was a queue: highlighted one question, copied it, and pasted it into the text box to type a question. Only when it appeared at the bottom of the list did he realize that the tour guide would be asked the same question twice.

Task 2

• First instinct was to ask the question to the tour guide through the Tour page. Then he would have reverted to direct personal interaction and seen if he could asked the tour guide directly.
• Thought the tour guide's picture was clickable and wanted to see if that would “get her attention,” and was frustrated when he was navigated to a user profile.
• Once he was told that there was another page with the information, navigated to the General Stats page and found it easily

Task 3

• Expected that clicking on an event in the side panel would highlight the location of the event on the map

Task 4

• Explored rest of the site before looking at the pins. Thought the pins were tours, saw that there was “a tour near the sloan school of management."
• Tried to see if he could refresh the page to see what his current location was so he could meet up with the student near there.
• Was uncomfortable with giving his phone number out to meet up with the student. 

Task 5

• Didn't see the stars (for overall rating) the first time.
• Wanted to see if after the tour clicking on things in the interface did anything, provided him with more information

General Feedback

• Wanted to see a search functionality for the map.
• Wanted to wording for the title "Question" to be ”Ask a Question” or something similar.
• Wanted more specificity on the title "Feedback" (what are you giving feedback to?).
• Liked the general stats interface.
• Was unsure that he would use the tour interface (would try for personal interaction with the tour guide), unless he was intimidated in any way.
• Felt that map was so central visually, that it should have played an even bigger role in the interface.
• Thought it would be cool to color coding buildings (by majors), or by type of building.
• Was confused by the change in the meaning of the pins
• Thought it would be cool to hear sound recordings of a guide giving a tour if someone couldn't make it to a tour personally. Would be cool to virtually replay a tour somehow.

User 3

Task 1

• Unsure whether all the pins were tours and what they meant.
• Didn't know that the list of questions was a queue, or that the questions were unclickable.

Task 2

• Found what he was looking for easily.

Task 3

• Found what he was looking for easily.

Task 4

• Unsure of what the pins did
• Was confused by the side panel hiding a part of the map (paper prototyping error)
• Was not uncomfortable with giving out phone number, unlike previous users

Task 5

• Didn't see the stars on the feedback page, thought they should be at the end of the page instead of the first item on the page

General Feedback

• Thought if the map was smaller, then the side panel wouldn't hide a part of the map and it would improve the overall visibility.
• Was confused by what the pins meant--didn't convey enough to him on their own.

Future issues to consider

Based on the user testing of these two designs, we have decided to keep the majority of the mobile design, and add a map page for additional functionality. There are issues we considered:

• Checking In to a Tour - Our initial mobile design required users to check into a tour (to ask questions) and place their name (for setting up meetups) before seeing the main menu. We realized through user testing that users may want to explore the college (events, stories, stats, etc.) without checking into a tour.  Therefore we are changing our check in page to only require the college you are at. The Question Queue and Feedback Options will not be visible until a user checks into a tour.  There will be a link to check into a tour on the main menu, and an extra name field for the schedule meetup option.
• Wording/Icons on Main Menu - There were confusing wording on some of the menu options.  "Tour" has been renamed to "Question Queue." "Feedback" has been renamed to "Tour Feedback." The icons for the menus items are the same as the icons were in the Map-Based design; one issue to consider is the question mark as an icon for the Question Queue, as it is commonly used as an icon for a "help" option and may confuse the user.
• Summary on Main Menu-  We realized that we repeat tour summary information on both the Main Menu and Question Queue.  We have decided to remove both the summary info and the tour guide picture (leaving only the queue) from the Question Queue, and add the picture to the Main Menu, beside the summary info.
• Affordances on the Question Queue - Users were confused about the question queue.  Many users did not realize that it was a queue, and some believed that the questions were clickable. Going forward, we would need to make the affordances clearer.  One ideas was to grey out the questions that were already on the queue, so that they don't appear clickable, and highlight the current question in some form.  We also thought of adding the time the question was asked (i.e. "23 min ago") to the side of the question, and changing the text box prompt from "Type Question..." to "Add Question..."
• General Stats/FAQ Page - To add consistency, we are considering changing the title bar of the page from the college name to "General Stats/FAQ." Some users did not understand the dot 'swipable' affordance, so we are thinking of ways to make it more clear. One idea is to show a sliver of the next graph to the right of the current one, so that the user can see that there is more to see. 
• Student Profile - We wanted to keep pages consistent in design, and we realized that the profile page was vastly different from others with its "tiles" interface.  Therefore we are thinking of changing the page to look more like the General Stats/FAQ Page. Instead of Graphs at the top, we would have the student name, picture, and a button to schedule a meetup.  Then for the expandable menus, we would have subsections like "Academics", "Extracurriculars," "Stories Written," etc.
• Stories Page Navigation - An issue that still needs thinking is how to navigate stories.  For now we are considering adding a search bar. Another thing to consider is what happens when stories get really long.
• Events Page - To make navigation easier instead of scanning each page, we would like to add a filter option to filter by type of event.  One user mentioned the ability to add to a calendar, so that is something to consider.
• Feedback Page - Some users missed the Star rating when they filled out the feedback form. We are thinking of adding a header such as "overall rating" and making the stars appear with a shadow/gradient/3d outline so that people won't miss it.  In addition, we are adding a "anything else" section so that users can give general feedback.
• New Map Page - We realized that the map-based design offered some features that the mobile design did not, such as seeing the current location/route of your tour.  Therefore, we are thinking of adding a "Map" page to the mobile design.  This page would show a map of the campus, along with the user/tour current location, and, if the user is checked in to a tour, the route the tour is on.  We would like to add the option to highlight buildings based on type (i.e. "residential," academic," etc.) as well as general info for buildings upon clicking on them (like building name).