Paper Prototype Design

Photos

These photos were taken after we made the improvements described in the Iterations section.

Briefing

Hubbub is a mobile application for managing incoming information from Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, and so on, and reading what's important to you as efficiently as possible.

Tasks

Analysis

Observations

Reading

• The first task description, "Read something interesting", initially confused some users who didn't realize they were being asked to try to scroll down or expand items. Changing the description to "Find something interesting to read" resolved this.
• Because it is a mobile app we tried to afford scrolling by displaying a partial line of content at the bottom edge, but some users did not realize that the page was meant to be scrollable.
• Users were able to notice the "Expand" button and click on it to expand items to see the full version. In some of the original tests, we didn't display a "Shrink" button on expanded items; during these tests users tried to touch outside the image to get back, similar to how you close a photo on Facebook. Some users did this even after we started showing the "Shrink" button - we could consider making clicking outside of an expanded item shrink it, though this could be another issue that comes up with a paper prototype.
• A couple of users hit the "Share" button, which took them to the canonical URL of the item (its imgur page, the e-mail in the Gmail interface, the post on Facebook, etc). Ideally, we could choose a reasonable default mode of sharing so that the user wouldn't have to take further action. There is always the possibility that the user wants to share between services or out-of-band, though.
• Some users thought the interface was busy and suggested hiding buttons. When the interface is on a real screen we can better determine whether the blow to learnability makes sense.
• For the most part, users were familiar with interfaces that present a list of items to read, and did not encounter significant roadblocks.

Saving/Organizing

• We have two mechanisms to save content for later. The first is to hit a "Read Later" button that causes items to show up again in a later session. The second is a set of tags that users can apply to items, and later search for, similar to Gmail. One user mentioned that she would save emails often since she doesn't want to reply to them on the phone, and suggested that hitting "Read Later" on an email mark it as unread, which would be desirable to users who use both Hubbub and their email clients to read emails.
• When the user hit "Read Later" we changed that button's caption to "Saved". Some users thought that "Saved" didn't fit their mental model (emails are already "saved") and suggested removing the item from the list. We might go a step further and make the gesture for reading later be swiping the item off the screen, similar to dismissing notifications on Android.
• Tagging went smoothly for most users. They realized that they should check the tags they want and then hit "Save" to save or "Cancel" to abort.
• We didn't ask users to create new tags, but they did recognize that there was a textbox at the top and one user created a tag anyway. That user did not realize that they had to press the "New Tag" button for their tag to be created.
• One user noted that it wasn't clear how to rename a tag. It is, in fact, impossible with the current interface, something we may need to fix.

Filtering

• Several users took more time on the filtering task than they did on the other tasks, partly because the task itself is more complex.
• The filtering interface went through the most changes in the iteration step. In the initial design, users got to the filtering interface by switching tabs at the top, but most users were confused and took longer than we would have liked to find the "Filter" tab. When we replaced it with a button, users learned the interface much more quickly.
• Some users didn't immediately understand what the advanced filter options referred to. On paper the "Advanced Filter" text surrounded by what were supposed to be disclosure arrows looked more like a header than a button. Since our task required using an advanced filtering option, users were slow to complete it. One user who couldn't find the "has a hyperlink" advanced option added "http" as a keyword search instead, which was creative and may have been as effective.
• Some users asked for ways to preview the results of their filter, showing filter options alongside the items in the reading interface.
• Before the our design iteration, users were confused about how to apply or save their filter. After we made the buttons more prominent, users figured it out quickly.

Design Iteration

We performed half of our paper prototype tests before making any considerable changes to the interface. Our major iteration included the following changes:

• Switched from a tab metaphor to a popup for changing the current filter. Users now applied the filter by pressing "Execute" instead of switching back to the "Read" tab
• Modified the first index card to “find something interesting to read”, rather than “read something interesting”
• Changed the description of the button that reveals more options in the filter from “advanced options” to “more options”
• Added “shrink” buttons to expanded content that was accidentally missing them

We noticed these changes had the following general effects on our subsequent users:

• Users more quickly and confidently navigated through our filtering task
• Users were somewhat less confused about how to access the hidden filter options in the filter menu
• Users interacted more with the reading interface (the first task was clearer)