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The login page was also the home page of the website. The home page consisted of the logo, the title, a brief description (deemed necessary after GR4 for users to understand the nature of the website) and a login component. If the user is a new user (i.e. without a login name/password combination) or has forgotten their password, the interface prompts them with additional components, appropriately. A snapshot of the primary view of the home page is shown below.
There is one main navigation bar at the top of the page that allowed the user to navigate between the different components of the interface. There is also a "Help" option for users to see instructions about how to interact with the interface. This was included because users said that the interface did not allude to its purpose at first, nor did it give any instructions of what to do at first for novice users. At At the top left of the navigation bar is the account settings option for the user which, when clicked, pops up a small pop-up which allows the user to edit his/her profile settings, add friends, change picture and sign out. This is shown in the figure below. 
The below snapshot is the pop up that allows a user to add a trip to his/her trip list. The design has very little text and most of the instructions are embedded into the actual input field boxes. This was a design decision that came up from a lot of the trial and error of designing this pop up, as it proved difficult at first to remove all the unnecessary textual clutter. There is also a dynamic satisfaction rating that is in the form of stars next to the Country drop down list. The design for the input trip pop up is almost identical to how trips look when saved into the trip list. This allows for consistency and increased usability for users, who will understand how their inputed information will get translated into the website. 
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Describe how you conducted your user test. Describe how you found your users and how representative they are of your target user population (but don't identify your users by name). Describe how the users were briefed and what tasks they performed; if you did a demo for them as part of your briefing, justify that decision. List the usability problems you found, and discuss how you might solve them.
Briefing
All users where briefed in exactly the same way, which is similar to the briefing we did for the paper prototypes since it proved to be very efficient and clear.
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World Insider - User Tasks
Task 1: Log In/Registerunmigrated-wiki-markup
Someone told you about +you about www.insider-world.com.+\[actually under +rossides.scripts.mit.edu+\]
You want to gain access to the website.
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Therefore, add a “trip” to your profile including basic info (like destination and date), top things to do there.
Task 3: Add Friends
Wiki Markup
Send an email invitation to a friend who might not know about this website yet and you want to introduce him/her to the website.
Task 4: Find trips
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Additional points: She then refreshed the page out of curiosity and noticed that after being logged in, simply refreshing the page logs you out which to her seemed a little bit strange. She made a valid point, although we do regard this as a more complicated functionality which is independent of the "visible" design.
Task 2:
Task 3:
Task 4:
User 2
*Task 2: *The trip was created successfully. Suggested that the list of activities be sorted (which we had initially done but reverted since trip advisor has a very similar list, which we guess has to do with the most frequently used trips). She suggested also that instead one could be able to type into the boxes and have it try to match something in the list automatically (i.e. autofill).
Task 3: Found it not so intuitive what "view all" meant, but managed to otherwise find the friend successfully by typing in the name. Mentioned it was not good that you could only search by first name, and that definitely the search bar should be able to accept pressing "enter." Did not entirely like the tabular display of friends and the fact that they don't come up in alphabetical order.
Task 4: Found the map functionality very useful and intuitive at the beginning. Got a little confused when she had to specifically pick the trip "Athens" herself from the friend's profile rather than being re-directed directly.
Overall feedback was enthusiastic and user was inquisitive and curious. She liked the layout but mentioned that a lot more "enter" and "double-click" functionality should be used since it's more intuitive. She said the interface is pretty user friendly in general, just that given the potential of website seeing a lot more functionality and interaction with the map would be exciting.
User 2
Background:
Female student at MIT, course 9. She is a sailor and has little experience designing websites. Is a heavy user of social networking websites. Fits target population since she travels back and forth and enjoys documenting her trips. Proficient in English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean.
Task 1: Completed task smoothly and without any mistakes. Task took less than 30 seconds.
Task 2: Found the Add Trip button very quickly and added the trip without any hesitation.
Task 3: Was first confused about how to search for a friend (either search by e-mail or by checking the world insider search tool) but after a little prompting was able to complete the task without any hesitation.
Task 4: Was a little disoriented about how to search for a country until she read the My Maps and was able to search trips easily and extremely quickly.
Overall feedback: Seemed like there was unnecessary clicking at some points such as selecting the trip from the list and then clicking the "View Trips" button. But other than that the website was very intuitive and easy to use. She said that it was very useful and would love to see it in the real world!
User 3
Background
Female student at MIT. Course 20. Is a sailor and has no experience designing website. Is a programmer and is proficient in Python, Matlab and Java. Speaks English, Spanish and French. Travels internationally at least once a year and loves to document her trips. Is a great candidate for a user of the website.
Task 1: First tried to sign in without creating a new profile but then was prompted that her username did not exist in the database. She then immediately created a profile and logged in. This was a smooth transition and showed that the process of a new user to log in is very streamlined.
Task 2: Completed task smoothly and without any delays. Loved the neatness of the interface
Task 3: Completed task smoothly and without any delays.
Task 4: Couldn't find out how to find other people's trips. Didn't know that My Map showed everyone else's travels and thought that it showed her personal map network. After some prompting, she understood how to complete her task. User 3
Reflection
Discuss what you learned over the course of the iterative design process. If you did it again, what would you do differently? Focus in this part not on the specific design decisions of your project (which you already discussed in the Design section), but instead on the meta-level decisions about your design process: your risk assessments, your decisions about what features to prototype and which prototype techniques to use, and how you evaluated the results of your observations.
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