PosterBoard - GR3 - Paper Prototyping

Manasi Vartak, Tristan Naumann, Chidube Ezeozue

Prototype Photos

Briefing

PosterBoard is a project that aims to increase visibility of event posters by encouraging interaction with the posters.

What you are looking at is an electronic poster board that will be installed up in a public place like the ground floor of the Stata center.

Scenario Tasks

Task 1

You have come across this poster board at Stata Center. Describe 5 things you can do with it. (We put in this open ended task to get a sense for whether which features of the poster board were discoverable)

Task 2

You have a USB drive in your possession. Add a poster from the USB onto the poster board

Task 3

Find a poster you like, add it to your calendar and scribble on it

Observations

Task 1 - Interaction

1. When asked to interact with the poster board, the users switched between the alternative view modes (calendar, random and clustered). One of them complained that he did not know what 'clustered' view meant.

2. Some of them gave one poster focus and tried to view previous comments on the poster and most of them attempted to add a poster and search for one too.

3. Several user attempted to move poster thumbnails around

4. One user hoped to see a context menu appear on a poster if he long-pressed it.

5. One user couldn't figure out what the purpose of the board was and wanted a placard alongside to poster board to describe to him its functions.

Task 2 - Adding a poster

1. One of the users attempted to drag the highlight around an initially selected date to the date he wanted as opposed to clicking on the date he wanted. The users seemed to understand, however, that the date field indicated the date when the poster would be expired from the board.

2. One of the users did not realize that the poster tag was to be selected from a drop-down.

3. One of the users felt that the 'Choose poster' instruction for opening a file browser and selecting a poster image was unclear. He was also not sure whether the file browser would take him straight to his USB drive or if he would have to browse there himself.

4. One of the users felt he would be too 'lazy' to add the extra details required for automatic generation of QR codes and opted not to automatically generate them.

5. Several users said that they would not want to create a QR code because they don't use them

6. One of the users couldn't find the "Choose poster" button for selecting the poster

Task 3 - Add to calendar and scribble

1. Without a QR code, a user was unsure about how to automatically add an event to his calendar. He however noted that the purpose of the QR code (when present) was not clear and expressed an opinion that 'nobody' scans QR codes. 

2. To add an event to calendar, a user directly added the time and venue on his phone

3. One user noted that he would be uncomfortable typing his email on the board (in order to add the event into his calendar) 

4. Users tried to scribble on the poster directly when there was no "pen" symbol for writing

5. One user was completely averse to the idea of writing not the poster

Other comments

1. One of the users expressed that he would like to have seen instructions or a video that informed him of the capabilities of the board.

2. A user ranked his preference level for ways of automatically adding events to his calendar as QR code > Swiping MIT ID > Adding manually. He added that swiping his ID ranked lower than QR code because we told him that mode of interaction would simply send him an email and he did not like the extra effort of moving the event from his email to his calendar. He added, though, that he would prefer that swiping his card sent him an SMS instead of an email.

3. When users tried to exit from the detailed view of a poster, they couldn't figure out how to do it. They recommended adding an "X" to the top of the poster or allowing click outside the blown up area to escape the mode. One of the users attempted to pinch-zoom it.

Prototype Iteration

Based on our user testing, we found that the poster visualizations were easy for users to understand, however, they did not know what "Clustered view" meant. We therefore changed the button label. When adding a poster, users were confused by the steps required to add a poster (i.e. how to explore files on a USB etc). We changed the add poster flow as below. Almost all users were not interested in using QR codes for adding events to their calendars. As a result, we removed them from the design. Users were also unsure about how to switch from the detailed view of a single poster to the original overall view. So we added an "X" to the right upper corner of posters in the detailed view.

1. We changed the label for the 'clustered view' to 'by topic'

2. We changed the program flow for adding a poster from:

Click '+' -> Fill form in any order

to 

Click '+' -> Get popup instruction to insert USB -> Show file browser -> Show rest of form

3. Removed QR codes

4. Added "X" to close poster in detailed view