Suggestible - GR2
Scenario:
Joseph is a twenty-five year old barista who works at Cafe Luna. It’s 6pm and his boss let him off early from work. Since his shift normally runs until 10pm, he has no idea what he wants to do with the unexpected free time. His coffee shop is in Central Square but he lives in a residential area farther away. Joseph wants to do something with his time in Central Square so instead of going all the way home he pulls out his phone and opens up the Suggestible application. He’s a generally indecisive person and he’s hoping this new application will help him find something to do. He sits down on a bench and starts to browse through the app for ideas.
When he opens the app, it suggests the movie Iron Man but he’s not really in the mood to see a movie tonight. The next suggestion that the app presents is the book Moby Dick. Joseph likes the idea and decides to explore it further, but he finds that the library is too far away and he doesn’t feel like buying the book from any of the listed stores. He goes back to the main page and looks at the the next option. The application’s next suggestion is pizza. Joseph decides to permanently delete pizza from his pool of potential suggestions but immediately regrets his decision; just because he doesn’t want pizza now doesn’t mean he’ll never want it again after all. He opens the android menu and presses the undo delete button and it’s added back the database of potential suggestions. He still doesn’t feel like eating pizza but the suggestion makes him realize he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Since he’s hungry, he toggles the options on the menu bar to only suggest food. The next suggestion is for Sushi and he Joseph thinks that it’s a great idea. The application shows him that Thelonious Monkfish is nearby and that Yelp gave it 3.5 stars which is good enough for him. He pushes the map button and it automatically fills in the address in the Google Maps application. He follows the map’s directions to the restaurant and is very satisfied with 3.5 star sushi. He’s so pleased with his suggestion that he gives Suggestible is a 5 star rating in the android app store.
Designs:
Storyboard Design 1:
This design features swipeable cards that display suggestions. This swipeable card feature is also used after selecting a choice to show the various options for that choice. This design mixes both text and images when suggesting. View pictures and descriptions to see how this design would appear in the scenario presented:
Pros:
Learnability:
- There are good affordances for switching between suggestions. The edges of the neighboring cards are shown to suggest swiping in both the left and right direction to go forward and backward. There are also outlined arrows on those neighboring cards that you can press to also bring you to the next card. These two possibilities for switching suggestions make it very easy to figure out at least one. (see picture 1 and 3)
- The Yes! and Never! buttons very clearly display their intent with good key words. This is more learnable than icons or pictures that suggest deletion but don’t explicitly have writing. (see picture 2)
- There is internal consistency with the card design on the sub-displays after selection. This means once the user figures out how to use the swiping cards they won’t have to re-learn a new selection process. (see picture 1 and 3)
- The bottom menu bar will have very clear button appearance (using gradient for depth) that is standard on most widgets and they will be in the popped up appearance which will make it clear to the user that the menu icons are clickable. Once the user clicks on the button it stays clicked in and turns to grayscale. This is an obvious affordance of toggleable buttons which implies two settings: on and off. (see picture 1 and 6)
Safety:
- This design allows you swipe in both directions. If the user swipes backwards they can see all the previous suggestions the application made and they can go back to one they liked but might have skipped by accidentally or one that seems appealing in retrospect.
- The Never! button makes it clear to the user that pressing this button removes the option forever unlike an X icon which the user might think is more temporary
- The menu provides an undo delete option which allows the user to quickly undo a press to a the Never! button. It also will show you the list of suggestions you said never to so that you can add them back at any time in the future. This safety feature makes sure that the user can change their mind about never wanting to see a suggestion either right after or days later. (see picture 5)
Efficiency:
- Swiping between cards is very efficient because the user doesn’t have to target a small button to go through suggestions.
- Having the menu bar of filter categories permanently at the bottom of the main suggestions screen allows the user to quickly see which categories they have selected as well as select new filters without pulling open an extra menu
- Showing one suggestion at a time means the text can be larger and the buttons can also be larger so it is easy to view, read, and click on.
- The undo delete button is a quick way to get back the most recent option you pressed never to rather than scrolling through the list of all deleted suggestions.
Cons:
Learnability:
- The user might not understand that the bottom bar on the suggestions page is for filtering categories. Even though the icons will obviously be buttons, they might not realize what the buttons are for.
- The menu bar of filter categories uses icons for the different suggestion types (books, places to go, food, movies) which might not be as evident to all users as words would be.
- The undo delete button and show deleted listings button are accessible by pressing the android menu button but the user might not think to press that button to see what options they have.
Safety:
- If undo isn’t easily learnable, a safety risk is that the user might press the Never! button and think there was no way of fixing that mistake
Efficiency:
- Only one suggestion is displayed at a time which might be slower. Since they can’t see the future suggestions they might veto a suggestion and go forward and then realize that a suggestion from long before was what they want. They then have to swipe back through multiple suggestions which could take a bit of time. Not having multiple suggestions on a page just means the user might be going back and forth a lot between options since they are always looking for the best option but might end up going back and settling in the end.
- Once you select a suggestion of restaurant or food or book etc... the user has a whole new set of cards to flip through which again shows the restaurants choices or media formats one at a time. This sub menu has the same potential efficiency problem that the initial menu had of showing only one option at a time with no vision of future options.
Design 1B:
We started drawing this design but realized it might be too similar to design 1. It still has some different pros and cons than design 1 so we included one page of the scenario and some pros and cons.
Pros:
- The submenu after choosing a suggestion is simple yet displays multiple options on one page. (see picture 3)
Cons:
- There is no back feature so you can’t go back to suggestions you have passed.
- The change category menu has to be opened before filtering can be applied. The toggled choices also are not always viewable
Storyboard Design 2:
