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Our plotting is currently very simple; it simply shows a line graph of the saved split and stroke points. We decided to focus our efforts on the race view UI and ignore the plotting UI, so you cannot compare pieces of data or show a plot while viewing other pieces of data. This is because our tasks focused on the race view and playback, not on quantitative data analysis.
Evaluation
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Catastrophic
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1. Luckily, we only encountered one catastrophic problem, and it is a problem that we have been working on for several iterations. When you are in the new race screen and you press the "Ready" button, the screen immediately counts down for the race. Several users thought that they might have done this when the screen was set up but they weren't actually ready to race yet, in which case they might have to scramble to setup. To fix this, we realized that pressing the "Ready" button should just display a large "Start" button in the middle of the screen, and this button should start the countdown. This improves error prevention and correction and makes the outcome of the button much more obvious.
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Major
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1. One user thought that she would want to input notes on the summary page of the race, so that she could reflect on it while looking at the data. We think that this could be fixed by adding a text field to the race summary screen that would allow the user to enter notes while seeing the summary data.
2. Several users tried to scroll the race view, only to realize that by starting the drag operation in the map cell, they were actually moving the map view. This lead to some temporary confusion (luckily it is reversible) and frustration since the scrolling is handled entirely by the iPhone and putting map views into table cells isn't standard Apple UI. We decided the best option would be to disable map view scrolling, since users will want the map to be centered on their boat anyways, and instead provide a slider that will customization the zoom level if desired.
3. Part of the user tasks was to save the race data. Since the race data is automatically saved, some users were confused by this. We decided that when you first go to the race summary screen, the "Races" back button should actually say "Save". Every other time you go to the race summary screen, it should say "Races". This makes it more obvious that you are saving the race data.
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Minor
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sfd
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Cosmetic
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sfddetails
Reflection
All in all, our project was very well scoped and the user interface we settled on was a natural fit for the iPhone. We were happy with our designs and we picked the simplest; we wanted the user to know how to use it immediately and not have to relearn basic iPhone user interface affordances. Our paper prototypes worked well and were very useful in determining which features didn't work and which did. The medium of paper also made it easy to move around the UI when changes were necessary; for example we made the rows separate from the background (on the New Race screen) so that you could reorder the elements with ease and just flip them over when the race started.
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