GR3 - Paper Prototyping

Prototype Video

Briefing

This is StreamBrowser. What we do is that we collect sources of internet streaming from sources like ustream and justin.tv and put it into an easy-to-browse interface, and bring the concept of TV channel browsing to internet streaming

Scenario Tasks

TASK 1. Get to the stream for your local news channel.

TASK 2. Go to a random stream in the category of PC Gaming

TASK 3. Go back to the first stream you watched (the local news channel)

Observations

The history bar was initially very confusing. Users did not know that the strip at the bottom represented the history. Later, when we tried to label the bottom as history, some users interpreted the history label as a button that would take you to the history. However, once we changed the design to have updates to the history visible as the user views new streams, it became apparent to the users that the bottom strip represented the recently watched streams.

In the first tests, the first task was "Get to the stream for CNN", with the intention of having users use the search feature to find CNN. However, the users tended to try to find CNN through the category browser (clicking "News" in the category side panel). Users will go through the category view if they think the stream will be popular. On the other hand, all users used the search box when told to find the local news.

Users in general were pretty quick at using the category sidebar.

The "Speak" label on the chat feature of the stream player itself is misleading. One user held it down and tried to actually speak into it, when it actually just enters what you typed in the text box into the chat.

Prototype iteration

Between prototypes, we overhauled how the history bar worked, since users simply weren't getting the old design. We made it more clear that the history bar represented the history by adding a label "Recent Streams" and also making visible the just-watched stream in the history bar when the user watches a stream. To make this change visible, we changes the stream viewer from a lightbox style viewer (the kind that centers the media in the center of the screen, and darkens the rest of the page) with a simple inline viewer.

We also added a title label to the main panel for better visibility.