GR3 - Paper Prototyping
(Note: We have tentatively changed our name to "Photo Circles" to emphasize the idea of circles of friends and de-emphasize the concept of albums, because it seems to be the biggest learnability issue that the users have. The name may be changed again.)
Prototype photos
Briefing
We introduced Spotlight to our users, telling them that it is a collaborative photo sharing site. We explained that this is a social site that can be used to share photos, similar to Facebook because people can view photos and comment on them. However, we informed the user that our site is different because it has the added benefit that friends can be allowed to add, delete, or rearrange photos in addition to just viewing the photos. We described that our site is similar to Google Docs, but for photos, where the owner of a circle can allow contributions from their friends.
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We noticed that most people were very comfortable dragging and dropping photos into albums, and found it intuitive that they could select many photos to drag into the window. However, one user asked what would happen if you dragged a photo on top of another photo, specifically where that photo would be placed. The user was also confused why there wasn't a finish button. Even though adding automatically finishes once uploading of dragged photos is done, we noticed that users like having a button for confirmation.
One user preferred having the view photos page and the upload photos page to be two separate pages. Moreover, when viewing updates from the main page, they wanted a link to the circle rather than only having the option to close the photo and return to the main page. They also wanted a more obvious way of exiting the photo to return to the main page when viewing updates other than just clicking outside the photo to close the box.
We also noticed that nobody tried to rearrange or delete photos. We didn't give these specific instructions because we wanted to see if it was obvious that this could be done, but we realized we needed a better affordance so users knew it could be done.
Another user asked for the ability to make captions for photos, preferring this over comments as the owner of the photo.
Finally, the last suggestion that was given to use was to allow people to create profiles for their accounts, and to allow users to view others' profiles. This gave us the idea to show your connections to other users when you click on their usernames.
Prototype iteration
The first prototype was a sketch of our "simplistic design". It worked well for the basic functions such as viewing photos and creating circles, but we learned from the users' suggestions to improve the minor details. The biggest change was for the "create new circle" page. Users requested a better suggestion interaction when adding individual members, so we changed the wording of instructions to suggest that it is also possible to add existing groups, which will be expanded to individual members upon selection. Another change was on the front page, where users suggested that a Facebook style news feed may work better. Therefore we added that element on the right side banner of front page. Lastly, we made minor changes on the circle/upload photo page to show a persistent box that will accept dragging actions, instead of just at the background.