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1. This screen was the major aspect of our design, and the work we paid in put in paid off. Users said that the size of the UI elements (such as text) was similar to a analog cox box, and in reality our UI was easier to read because of the brightness of the screen (as compared to a real cox box screen, which is comparable to a calculator LCD).
2. Title editing is intuitive, again via use of standard iPhone affordance.
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2. If there exists no data for the stroke rate/split we grayed out the "Plot" button and replaced the numbers with "- " or "- : -" respectively respectively. Users found this to be very intuitive and never confused that feedback with lost data (usually it meant their accelerometer or GPS are turned off).
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Your iPhone running this application will be mounted to the boat, directly in front of you. Because you cannot use your hands to manipulate the application during an active race (they are busy performing steering adjustments and the like); you must pre-set all settings for this application before the race begins.
Tasks:
- Set up a new race## Re-order data considering stroke rate is the most important datum for this race and split is the least important
- Start recording race data and cox (encourage and guide) your rowers through the race
- Stop recording and save race data after race has finished
- Playback recorded race data
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3. Our second user wished that the notes section could be longer (~1/2 pages) for practice sessions, but this was also not implemented because of a design decision. Our application should not support display of large bodies of text, as it is an app designed specifically to show many short snippets of valuable information simultaneously.
Cosmetic
1. Our first user thought the thumb for scrubbing through playback data was a volume indicator, due to its similarity with the Music application in iOS. This user quickly realized the true functionality, but a fix to this would be to add a time elapsed and time remaining value just above the left and right sides of the scroll thumb respectively.
2. Another user was unsure if the screen he had entered when first handed the application to test was in fact the first screen. This screen does appear in the same way a screen in a view stack on which a previous user left the application when closing it. When asked directly, after the test, the user stated that it felt as though he was stumbling on where ever the previous user left the application. A possible remedy for this is to have a splash screen or a simple title screen that leads you to a list of data. This was originally in our design, but the idea was abandoned after no other features could be added to this screen.sfd
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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