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Manasi Vartak, Tristan Naumann, Chidube Ezeozue
Prototype Photos
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Briefing
PosterBoard is a project that aims to increase visibility of event posters by encouraging interaction with the posters.
What you are looking at is an electronic poster board that will be installed up in a public place like the ground floor of the Stata center.
Scenario Tasks
Task 1
You have come across this poster board in Stata Center. Describe 5 things you can do with it. (We utilized this open ended task to get a sense for which features of the poster board were discoverable as well as those that might be expected).
Task 2
You have a USB drive in your possession. Add a poster from the USB onto the poster board.
Task 3
Find a poster you like, add it to your calendar and scribble on it.
Observations
User Background
1. All users were familiar with non-digital poster boards.
2. Most were aware of QR codes and a mechanism on the phone to scan them.
3. Some have added event reminders manually using their phone.
Task 1 - Interaction
1. When asked to interact with the poster board, the users switched between the alternative view modes (calendar, random and clustered). One of them complained that he did not know what 'clustered' view meant.
2. Some of them gave one poster focus and tried to view previous comments on the poster and most of them attempted to add a poster and search for one too.
3. Several user attempted to move poster thumbnails around.
4. One user hoped to see a context menu appear on a poster if he long-pressed it.
5. One user couldn't figure out what the purpose of the board was and wanted a placard alongside to poster board to describe to him its functions.
6. One user was confused by the lack of rendered staples and pushpins and expected this metaphor from the analog equivalent. Much like the placard, he claimed he would need a description to provide a strong distinction (though noted if it were actually on a monitor rather than paper this would be more obvious).
Task 2 - Adding a poster
1. One of the users attempted to drag the highlight around an initially selected date to the date he wanted as opposed to clicking on the date he wanted. The users seemed to understand, however, that the date field indicated the date when the poster would be expired from the board.
2. One of the users did not realize that the poster tag was to be selected from a drop-down.
3. One of the users felt that the 'Choose poster' instruction for opening a file browser and selecting a poster image was unclear. He was also not sure whether the file browser would take him straight to his USB drive or if he would have to browse there himself.
4. One of the users felt he would be too 'lazy' to add the extra details required for automatic generation of QR codes and opted not to automatically generate them.
5. Several users said that they would not want to create a QR code because they don't use them.
6. One of the users couldn't find the "Choose poster" button for selecting the poster.
7. One user would have plugged in the USB immediately without hitting '+' button.
Task 3 - Add to calendar and scribble
1. Without a QR code, a user was unsure about how to automatically add an event to his calendar. He however noted that the purpose of the QR code (when present) was not clear and expressed an opinion that 'nobody' scans QR codes.
2. To add an event to calendar, a user directly added the time and venue on his phone.
3. One user noted that he would be uncomfortable typing his email on the board (in order to add the event into his calendar).
4. Users tried to scribble on the poster directly when there was no "pen" symbol for writing.
5. One user was completely averse to the idea of writing on the poster.
6. When adding event to phone manually, users looked at date on poster rather than header in calendar view.
Other comments
1. One of the users expressed that he would like to have seen instructions or a video that informed him of the capabilities of the board.
2. A user ranked his preference level for ways of automatically adding events to his calendar as QR code > Swiping MIT ID > Adding manually. He added that swiping his ID ranked lower than QR code because we told him that mode of interaction would simply send him an email and he did not like the extra effort of moving the event from his email to his calendar. He added, though, that he would prefer that swiping his card sent him an SMS instead of an email.
3. When users tried to exit from the detailed view of a poster, they couldn't figure out how to do it. They recommended adding an "X" to the top of the poster or allowing click outside the blown up area to escape the mode. One of the users attempted to pinch-zoom it.
Prototype Iteration
Based on our user testing, we found that the poster visualizations were easy for users to understand, however, they did not know what "Clustered view" meant. We therefore changed the button label.
(Change 1) 'Clustered view' changed to 'by topic'
Additionally, many users were confused by the workflow required to add a poster (i.e. how to explore files on a USB, etc.). We therefore changed the poster flow as follows:
(Change 2) Free-form workflow (i.e. Click '' -> Fill form in any order) is made structured (i.e. Click '' -> Get popup instruction to insert USB -> Show file browser -> Show rest of form)
Further, almost all users were not interested in using QR codes for adding events to their calendars. As a result these were removed from the design.
(Change 3) Removed QR codes from design. Used email entry to mail reminders (possibility of using card swipe to send reminders).
Finally, to offset the confusion about how to exist a detailed view after a poster is selected we added a specific affordance for flexibility, though clicking outside the border would continue to work.
(Change 4) Added 'X' to the closer poster in detailed view in upper right corner.
Further Discussion
Another thing noticed through prototyping but not called out explicitly above is that users asked to interact with the board using a pen had different input and gesture expectations than those asked to interact using touch. For example, touch users often expected to scale images using the same gestures familiar to them from smartphones while this was not a common sight for someone using a pen who expected only a single touch point. Many of the differences observed are articulated in work done by Ken Hinckley at Microsoft Research in his exploration of pen vs. touch input (http://kenhinckley.wordpress.com/publications/). Therefore, as we gain additional information about the capabilities and limitations of the hardware with which we will be prototyping we will factor these more subtle observations in as well. 
