GR3 - Paper Prototypes

Prototype Photos

– to be added –

Briefing

Hi. In this experiment you are playing a musician named Sparklepony using the ConcertBOS site to find a concert to be inspired by.

This site allows you to visualize information about concerts in the greater Boston area, allowing you to find concerts that meet certain criteria, find friends who may be interested in the concert, and find additional details about the artist or venue.

This experiment is intended to bring out flaws in the interface.  We've sketched out a simple version of the interface to work through, where we play the role of the computer.  Pretend you're interacting with a website.  As you work through the tasks we've given you, we'd appreciate it if you would tell us what you're thinking, especially if you get stuck or confused.  This means that there's something wrong with our design, and knowing what you're thinking will help us fix it.

Thanks for helping with our project, and keep in mind that you can stop at any time.

Scenario Tasks

1. Find a concert that meets the following criteria:
   1. Most importantly, the artist has to be somewhat similar to Sparklepony.
   2. around $40
   3. some time in the next month
2. Find a friend to go with, and invite this friend along.
3. Research the venue.
   1. Not a large venue: less than 400 people
   2. Standing room only.

Observations

Prototype 1

User 1

Task 1:

• They completely missed the filter sidebar, and didn't really make use of the visualization.
• Color gradients might not be the best way to express the filtering. The user really liked the idea after it was explained to them, but said that it was initially non-obvious.
• They really liked the artist similarity graph.

Task 2:

• She didn't really have an issue finding and inviting a friend.

Task 3:

• The user was very happy with the details we provided for the venue, and completed this task easily.

General

• The user said that indicating clickability was difficult, but that's something we've had issues with on a paper prototype.

User 2

Task 1:

• They started looking specifically at time, not artists. Briefing error?
• The user said that hard filtering would be just as useful as the gradient. They said that the gradient would just look like visual sugar.

Task 2:

• They invited a friend straight from the concert page. They never hit the friend visualization.
• User 2 wanted to be able to change the invitation message.

Task 3:

• Said that a venue filter would be cool: on any page, you can filter by small, medium, or large venues.
• Wanted a way to see more concerts at a specific venue (a more extensive upcoming concerts list)

User 3

Task 1

• On the first landing page, they were looking for a search bar or something.
• User 3 was very confused by the Artist Similarity page.
  • they weren't really sure where the information was from, or what the graph meant.
  • like the other users, didn't realize that you could drag and curate concerts.

Task 2

• User 3 found the friend from the concert page, and never hit the friend page.
• User 3 wanted a way to publish invitation information on other sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Task 3

• They wanted a map for the venue page.

General

• User 3 wanted a way to buy tickets.

Prototype iteration