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Due to logistical reasons, we had only one team member present in each user test, who worked as both facilitator and observer.
User 1
Our first One user was our original User B in GR1. His requests were part of the requirements of the project, but we still presented the GR3 debriefing to him. His tests included his original request to find energy consumption broken down by the hours, and he felt the user interface intuitive enough to quickly find out the information. He was also given some other tasks, for example, schedule a transaction. His overall feedback is that the interface is easy to learn, and information is presented well.
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- When he tried to adjust the Air Conditioner setting, the soft-keyboard blocked the screen. He couldn't see where the cursor was or whether the backspace was actually deleting the old value. To solve this, we will need to move the widget up, above the soft-keyboard.
- After schedule a transaction from the Reserves tab, the screen returned to the device tree view. It's not obvious how to view the just scheduled transaction. To solve this, we can add more information in the Toast dialog.
- He was pressing on the device name itself, while trying to bring up the device settings page. Currently using the Edit Setting button is the only way to get to the page. We should consider supporting context menus as well, which will pop up when user presses a device name.
User 2
The second user is a female home owner. She is a typical user among the targeted user population of the application. She had no prior knowledge of the application before the test. She was verbally introduced the purpose of the application first, and then given about ten minutes to play around it. After that we asked her to do the following specific tasks:
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- Data shown for the Daily tab actually contains hourly data. Today's total consumption, for example, can't be found in the Daily tab. To fix this, we can make today's total data shown on the chart as text. We should also consider to add help at the bottom of the screen, similar to status bar of Windows.
- Total is mistakenly considered the sum of all selected devices. Adding a separate line for the sum in the chart should solve the problem, and it has value in its own behalf.
- Back button doesn't work, and Undo is not supported. This is a missing function that we will add in the future.
- There is no obvious indication that user can swipe the chart to scroll. This is another missing function that we will add in the future.
- Besides the issues above, the problems found in the first user test also found in this test.
User 3
Our third user is a male apartment resident with a roommate, also part of our targeted population. He had no existing knowledge of smart grid or smart meter technology. He was given the GR3 debriefing before the test, and was then asked to perform the same tasks as User 2, above.
Reflection
Risk Assessment
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