We built three initial paper prototypes corresponding to the three designs we did in GR2 - Designs . We tested each of the prototypes on users and incorporated their feedback on our revised design.

Briefing

This is what we told the users:

* ShutterConnect aims to make it easier for people to find photographers, and for photographers to advertise their services.

* As a user, you are interested in finding a photographer's services for a particular event. After the event, you will also probably be interested in reviewing the photographer.

* As a photographer, your main task will be to create a profile page with some sample work uploaded, so as to advertise yourself to potential customers.

Scenario Tasks

Task 1: Finding a Photographer

You're looking for a photographer for your wedding, which is in 3 weeks. You want a wedding album and full coverage (i.e. the photographer should be there all day). Your budget is $2000. You also want to make sure that you get the digital files, and you would rather not pay for any travel expenses incurred by the photographer.

Task 2: Adding a Review

You used the services of the photographer "Ansel Adams" two weeks ago. You were very happy with the service and you want to leave a good review, highlighting his agreeable personality and the promptness with which he delivered the great photos.

Task 3: Creating a Profile

You are a photographer whose business is called "Awesome Shoots Inc." You want to describe yourself as a photographer primarily involved in portraiture and as who loves working with seniors. You have 3 sample photos to upload and you charge $500 per shoot by the hour. You live in Cambridge, near MIT.

Prototype Designs and Observations

Design 1

Observations on the above design: 

Users had some difficulty understanding how to add photos inside the photo gallery widget. We had hoped that having a "click to add photos" dummy picture in the gallery would give sufficient hints, but we found that the widget was still quite foreign.

Similarly, they didn't know what the arrows next to the photo widget did. We had hoped that users would be familiar with this style of gallery widget, but apparently it's still quite novel.

We had intended the behavior of Click-To-Edit to be that clicking anywhere outside would save the changes. However, users found this confusing and wanted explicit "Save" and "Cancel" buttons to accompany the text box.

The sign up buttons were too prominent because the users didn't realize that they could do pretty much everything other than hire the photographer without being a member of the website.

The "natural text input" box raised some questions. Users appreciated the example provided but weren't sure about what to do when their query didn't exactly match the pattern (for example, when they had more or fewer details to supply).

We wanted users to type the photographer's name in the natural text input box on the home page to find photographers, but this was too subtle. The problem was compounded by the fact that the single example on the homepage about using the text box was on finding photographers for events.

We wanted to give users the ability to save photographers and remove them from their search results. The goal was to make the search results page be the list of candidates which users would narrow down after viewing profiles. However, both the "remove" and 'save search" were not visible and no one noticed that they could even do this.

Design 2

Observations on the above design:

We hoped that users would just press "enter" when their search was done and not require a "search" button. Most users were confused by this behavior and told us that they were confused because there was no search button.

The design has "Continue"/"OK" buttons on the left and "Cancel"-type buttons on the right. Users found this to be foreign.

Users were confused by the presence of the "Random Pictures from Today" widget in the home page. They weren't sure what it was and tried to interact it even when their task didn't require interacting with the widget.

We had a textbox which caused confusion about the proper format to enter times (e.g. am/pm or military time, colon or no colon etc). We should replace this with the time widget from calendaring applications.

Design 3

Observations on the above design:

The fact that the title & comment section of the reviews is optional needs to be indicated clearly.

The click2text boxes in the photographer's profile should have either individual or cluster save/cancel buttons. The click-outside-and-save-automatically method doesn't give enough reassurance that the changes were saved.

During reviews, if the wrong photographer was selected, we should be able to go back to the previous page. "go back" next to the photographer name.

For writing a review, it is implicit that the user finds the photographer first, so they can use the find-a-photographer functionality. We don't need a separate search for review writing.

Revised Design

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Observations on the Revised Design

• One prototype tester suggested that the 'sign up' field was so prominent that it was not clear that a user can search without signing in.
• A positive criticism was that the help prompt in the search box was useful in hinting at the syntax to use while searching.
• One prototype tester took some time in deciding on how to move from the results of a photographer search to the photographer's page. The prototype tester suggested that we add a button or a clearly afforded hyperlink on the photographer's name to this effect.
• We plan on implementing a slider to facilitate selecting a user's budget. One tester suggested that we add a number to the slider, so that a user gets immediate feedback on what her selected budget constraint is.
• It was also not clear how to conduct a new search while currently viewing results of a previous search. One prototype tester mentioned that clicking the logo to go back to the home page and start a new search was not obvious.
• It was also suggested that we add functionality such that entering a photographer's name and hitting enter immediately took the user to the photographer's profile page.
• Instead of adding a visible status message whenever a user changes one of the parameters of a search, one test user suggested that we eliminate the status message altogether, and just use the check box on the left-most column of the search page to indicate that a parameter has changed.
• We were also advised to add a popup with "Save/Cancel" buttons whenever a user clicked on an object to make it editable instead of just having the user assume that editing an element automatically saves it.
• As part of each photographer's page, we have a sample gallery that displays the photographer's work. One prototype tester asked that we have an 'X' on the top left corner of every photo that allowed a user to delete the photo. In addition, it was suggested that we have a placeholder icon named 'Click to Add Photo' always be in the left-most position in the photo gallery. Lastly, one prototype tester recommended that the photos on the gallery be draggable, to allow a photographer to edit the position of the pictures.