Tasks
- Insert username - input random sequence of characters
- Insert password - surreptitiously
- Search for movie - from finite list
Scenario
Billy is a senior at MIT who had three friends from home come visit for the weekend! They decided after crazy partying Friday night, that on Saturday night they would take it easy, stay in and watch a movie. So Billy and three friends, sat on the couch in Billy’s room, across from the projector screen, to find a movie to watch. Without a wireless keyboard, Billy was required to use an apple remote (see picture on the right) to login to his Hulu.com account (username and password) and then search for movies.
It’s important his mischievous friends don’t see his password while logging in. Additionally, this agreeable group of friends will likely search for several different movie titles, before agreeing on one they’d like to watch.
Below are three preliminary designs we would like to explore that would allow Billy to swiftly and efficiently login and find a movie from his couch amid vociferous debating.
Designs
2. Design 2 - Binary Search Letter Selection
Inspired by the commonplace algorithm, this design would be a binary or tertiary search on the next desired letter. Below are three potential visualizations of this, where a user would use the left or right arrow keys to narrow in on the desired letter. All three diagrams show the same progression of selection an “N”.
Binary Search Letter Selection 1
Initially Billy is given two options "A-M" or "N-Z". By hitting the "right arrow", two nodes appear under "N-Z" further dividing the letters into "N-T" or "U-Z". This could continue until Billy ends up at only one letter, which would require 4-5 key presses. The design shown above narrows down to three letter, at which point Billy could use the "left", "right", "select" keys to choose from one of three possible letters.
Binary Search Letter Selection 23. Design 3 - Highlighted Keyboard