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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.
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You have come across this poster board at in Stata Center. Describe 5 things you can do with it. (We put in utilized this open ended task to get a sense for whether 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.
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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.
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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
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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 not the posteron 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.
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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. When adding a poster,
(Change 1) 'Clustered view' changed to 'by topic'
Additionally, many users were confused by the steps workflow required to add a poster (i.e. how to explore files on a USB, etc.). We therefore changed the add poster flow as below. Almost 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 , we these were removed them from the design.
(Change 3) Removed QR codes from design. Users were also unsure about how to switch from the detailed view of a single poster to the original overall view. So we added an "X" to the right upper corner of posters in the detailed view.
1. We changed the label for the 'clustered view' to 'by topic'
2. We changed the program flow for adding a poster from:
Click '+' -> Fill form in any order
to
Click '+' -> Get popup instruction to insert USB -> Show file browser -> Show rest of form
3. Removed QR codes
. 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. 4. Added "X" to close poster in detailed view