Introduction
In this phase of the project, we built the paper prototype of the interface for Beaver Buzz. We decided to use the second design as our main layout due to its innovative layout and simplicity. It would also be the ideal layout for porting to a mobile device. We integrated some of the ideas from our the other two designs as well, such as the "what's hot" label from the first design and the simple login/register from the third design.
Paper Prototypes
User Briefing
"Beaver Buzz is a new website for MIT students to share articles, discuss topics, and create events. It is similar to other article-sharing websites such as Digg.com and Reddit.com, but will support topics more in line with MIT students' interests. Each student with a valid MIT address will be able to make an account. They will then be able to browse topics, each of which may have three types of submissions: articles, which link to an article on the web; discussions, which functions simply as a forum; and events, which have a time, date, and event description. Note that articles and events also have a "discussion" section so people can comment on them. It is also possible for a user to post an article, event, or discussion."
Tasks
1) Create an account.
2) Click on the article called "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Released."
3) Create a new event called "Ice Cream" in the "Study Breaks" category.
4) Make the "Study Breaks" category viewable.
5) Go to "My Posts."
6) Click the "comments" section of the "Ice Cream" event.
7) Add a comment to the "Ice Cream" event.
First Prototype Observations
Overall, the users were able to complete the tasks with little problems. The following were our observations for the first prototype:
- One major problem we had was in task six. Users did not completely understand the difference between an event, an article, and a discussion. This had somewhat to do with the way the paper prototype implemented the "create new post" window. We didn't have any affordances to specify that for an event required a location, a date, and a time, nor that an article required a link. In addition, we feel they did not understand how they could interact with the different type of posts (for example, clicking an article in the main window leads to the article, but clicking a discussion in the main window leads to a "comments section" without any article).
- In this iteration we used "tags" instead of "topics." This confused the user, as they did not understand that "tag" meant the same thing as "topic." In particular, one user thought tag meant the link of the article.
- One user had a serious problem with task four and got stuck for a while. Our "add topic" icon was a simple plus sign, and he did not understand what it stood for.
- One user did not understand