IPL-SI: Group Design Project 8
From VMT
- Return to Designing IPL Social Interaction
Contents |
[edit] Instructions
- This week, each group should conduct cognitive walkthroughs of their own interaction designs, using the prototypes and scenarios posted in week 6. You may revise these and post them below on this page to make them more suitable for the cognitive walkthrough. You may want to sketch a series of prototyped screenshots showing the interface at different steps, share them in the wiki, and print them out to show to your subjects.
- Cognitive walkthroughs are most easily conducted face-to-face. Therefore, each group member should find a "subject" and walk them through the scenario. Select a subject who is computer literate, but who has not studied HCI. Explain the background of the IPL and lead them through the scenario. Try to have them "talk aloud" about their experience -- what they are thinking as they decide what to do, what buttons to press, what words in the interface might mean, etc.
- When each member has done a walkthrough, the group should compare notes and summarize what they have learned about their interface from the walkthrough and the heuristic evaluations.
[edit] Comments on Group Statements
[edit] Team 1 Statement
Updated Scenario: Jake is a college student who is getting ready to go on vacation and is looking for reading material on nutrition. Jake has no real prior knowledge on the topic and wants to spend his time reading about it. Jake logs into the IPL and searches for book discussions about general nutrition. Jake finds a forum where people discuss books they have read on the topic. Jake finds a book reference and adds it to his "digital bookshelf."
Goal: User searches the IPL and searches for books about general nutrition. User selects a discussion topic. User then looks through the results and adds a book to his bookshelf. User then checks their bookshelf.
Tester 1 results:
Tester 2 results:
Tester 3 results:
Tester 1 results:
- User clicked on the link instead of the book icon in order to add the book to the shelf.
Tester 2 results:
Tester 3 results:
- User failed to add book to digital bookshelf ... clicked on URL leading to Amazon's website. It was not initially apparent that the Add Book image was a link to adding functionality
- "Add Book" label was confused with actual links
Tester 1 results:
Tester 2 results:
Tester 3 results:
- User looked to green box and profile links to find bookshelf
- User failed to confirm addition to bookshelf ... could not find link in left-hand navigation pane
Tester 1 results:
Tester 2 results:
Tester 3 results:
Tester 1 results:
Tester 2 results:
Tester 3 results:
General consensus:
- Overall the users were comfortable in carrying out the required steps.
- If they did get confused at some point, they were able to find their way out.
Things to consider:
- Adding a link to the notification box, linking directly to bookshelf
- Finding a solution to remove ambiguity surrounding links and "Add to Bookshelf" icon
Demographics:
- Profile of user 1: 2nd year in Business Administration, Female
- Profile of user 2: 2nd year in Business Administration, concentration:
Economics and Finance, Male
- Profile of user 3: 3rd year in Chemical Engineering, Female
[edit] Team 3 Statement
For this week's assignment we completed a cognitive walk-through with three different test users that were not familiar with the IPL or our prototype before. In the following the different steps of the walk-through and the related user actions are described.
Scenario Background : Jack has logged into the Internet Public Library website. He wants to conduct a search for existing content pertaining to Global Warming, and perhaps add his own knowledge on the subject if he so decides.
Step 1
Description:
Suppose that you have logged in as a member of the IPL. You are now at the IPL homepage, and you want to conduct a search for global warming. How would you accomplish this?
Expected User Action:
User says they would type global warming into the search and clicks go.
Actual User Action:
User 1: As expected after a few seconds of orientation. User 2: As expected. User 3: As expected.
No. of Clicks:
User 1: 1 User 2: 1 User 3: 1
Time (sec.):
User 1: 20 User 2: 22 User 3: 14
Errors:
User 1: none User 2: Spent time looking at the IPL info on the left panel of the page. User 3: none
Step 2:
Description:
From here, suppose that you would like to view a discussion about whether global warming is really that important. What would you do?
Expected User Action:
User clicks the discussion board link for "Is global warming a serious issue?
Actual User Action:
User 1: As expected. User 2: As expected. User 3: As expected.
No. of Clicks:
User 1: 1 User 2: 2 User 3: 1
Time (sec.):
User 1: 30 User 2: 28 User 3: 8
Errors:
User 1: none
User 2: At first, user attempted to click the "Discussion Board" text as a link, but with no results.
Only afterwards did the user notice the specific discussion board link below.
User 3: none
Step 3:
Description:
Now after reading some of the posts suppose that you would like to post some reply to the existing posts. What would you do?
Expected User Action:
User clicks the Reply to Discussion Button
Actual User Action:
User 1: As expected. User 2: As expected. User 3: As expected.
No. of Clicks:
User 1: 1 User 2: 1 User 3: 1
Time (sec.):
User 1: 10 User 2: 20 User 3: 11
Errors:
User 1: none User 2: User at first looked straight at the answers, without noticing that the question was above the "answers to this question" text. User 3: none
Step 4:
Description:
To submit text to be posted, what would you do?
Expected User Action:
User says they would type a message into the text box, and then click the Post Reply button.
Actual User Action:
User 1: As expected. User 2: As expected. User 3: As expected.
No. of Clicks:
User 1: 2 User 2: 2 User 3: 2
Time (sec.):
User 1: 10 User 2: 19 User 3: 16
Errors:
User 1: none
User 2: User initially assumed that there would be a text field to reply at the bottom of the replies,
but then settled on the button to press instead.
User 3: The user raised the issue that there should be the ability to reply to each posting instead of having
the one button at the bottom of all the postings.
Step 5:
Description:
Now suppose that you would once again like to view your search results, how would you accomplish this?
Expected User Action:
User clicks on the blue Search Results tab.
Actual User Action:
User 1: As expected. User 2: As expected. User 3: User clicks on the Contents tab.
No. of Clicks:
User 1: 1 User 2: 1 User 3: 1
Time (sec.):
User 1: 10 User 2: 32 User 3: 24
Errors:
User 1: none User 2: none User 3: The user misconstrued the Contents tab as returning the initial search contents.
Results
Total time needed:
User 1: 80 seconds User 2: 120 seconds User 3: 73 seconds
Total errors made:
User 1: 0 User 2: 3 User 3: 1
Comments:
User 1: The site’s search was only second choice after not finding anything related to the given search topic in the left-hand navigation. Maybe search should be promoted more to give the user a “good and save feeling” about using it. User 2: User reported that after he had posted the text, he was confused that the page was automatically scrolled down to his post and so the original question was hidden from view. Also, he remarked that it was strange that after the last step, the Discussion Board tab had returned to being a Homepage tab. Finally, the user explained that the search tab should contain some sort of description of the search it contains. User 3: Overall the user felt the site was intuitive. She felt that the tabs were a little misleading and could be better suited with better wording or there should be a link that takes the user back to their search results instead of a tab. She also mentioned that we might want to consider adding additional response links to each discussion board entry instead of one button at the bottom of the postings.
[edit] Team 5 Statement
Goal: To add a resource to the group shelf which will automatically get added to the group shelves of all the team members.
Scenario: Mark is a student of iSchool at Drexel University. He is working along with his group on a Human Computer Interaction project. Mark wanted to see some data and he logged into internet public library (ipl) to check out some references. Mark searched the ipl for human computer interaction and found a couple of resources related to it. He found one resource useful and decided to share it with his group members Alex and Shraddha. So he added the book to his group shelf. Once done, this book automatically got added to the group shelf of marks team members. So next whenever Alex or Shraddha would login they would be able to view this book in their group shelves as well.
Steps:
Step 1: Internet public Library (ipl) homepage. Mark has to login with his email and password in order to access and manipulate his personal shelf as well as to view others shelves. If this is Marks first login then he will have to sign up with ipl giving all his personal information to create a profile for himself. Thus, we assume here that Mark has a profile created for himself and he enters his login id and password to order to access his account.
Step 2: Mark is logged into his personal space consisting of his shelves, his friends list (whose shelves he can view) and a chat room consisting of his friends who are logged/offline in the system. Mark decides to search the ipl for resources related to human computer interaction. So he enters this topic in the search box on the top-right corner of the screen and clicks on the search button.
Step 3: The search results are displayed on this screen. It shows a list of book abstracts available with ipl for this topic, a list of magazines available, a list of newspaper containing this topic etc. Mark decides to view the book abstract on Human Computer Interaction (3rd edition) ad clicks on that hyperlink.
Step 4: The details of the book are displayed along with buttons like Add to shelf, Add to group Shelf, Add to wish list which are quite self explanatory. Mark can also tell about this book to his friends by clicking on the Tell a friend button. Mark can also check the shelves of the people who have the same book on their shelves as he is searching for, in this case Abhijeet G and Teena M.
He can also contact these people by sending then an offline message incase he needs some help on this subject as they show similar research interest. He can also invite them for chat incase they are available online (displayed by a green icon next to their names).
In this case mark decides to add the book to his group shelf and so clicks on the Add to group shelf button.
Step 5: The screen displays a conformation box in order to reconfirm whether mark wants to add the resource to his group shelf. Mark decides to click on the Confirm button as he wants to add the book to the group shelf.
Step 6: Mark is navigated to his group shelf, where he can see the human computer interaction book added to his other resources. Mark now has the option of either go back to his search results incase he wants to check out other resources displayed by the search engine or he can go back to his homepage. Mark decides to logout of ipl and so he clicks on the Logout button.
Step 7: After Mark logs out of the system the ipl homepage is displayed. After sometime Alex logs into the system by entering his credentials.
Step 8: Alex is displayed with his homepage. Alex clicks on the hyperlink called as Group Resource in order to view content in his group shelf.
Step 9: Alex can now view the Human computer interaction book added to his group shelf. If he clicks on the book he will be able to see that the similar book is available on Mark and Shraddha’s shelves as well. He will also be able to view tha the book was added to his shelf by Mark. Alex then decides to logout of the system and so clicks on the Logout button.
Step 10: Alex is logged out and the ipl homepage is displayed.
The following Walk through was conducted by Shraddha for 3 different users. All the 3 users were computer literates. The background of the 3 users was as follows:
User 1: Masters Student specializing in Computer Sciences, Age group – (20-30years), Gender - Female.
User 2: Working professional specialized in finance, Age group – (25-35years), Gender - Male.
User 3: Regional director working for Public health, Age group – (50-60years), Gender – Male.
User 1 interaction:
Screen 1: The login page was very clear for the user.
Screen 2: Search in the ipl was clear. But the user felt that they should also be allowed to search their own resources, meaning there should be a separate search option for searching users own personal resources or users group resources etc. The user was not very clear whether the friends she is seeing in her network are her friends or are they the library officials available to her in case of any need.
Screen 3: The user was happy with the way the search results were organized.
Screen 4: The user was not very sure what did add to shelf mean. She was not sure what kind of contents can go into it. She suggested making it Add to personal shelf instead of Add to shelf.She was not sure how to access Abhijeets shelf as Abhijeet did not have a hyperlink, though she quite well understood that Abhijeet was online (logged into ipl) and Teena was not.
Screen 5: The user found the Confirmation box very nice. She said she often makes mistakes by clicking on wrong links, so a confirmation box is a very helpful tool for her.
Screen 6: The user was confused as to who added the Designing Interactions book to the group shelf. The user felt a necessity of explicitly mentioning the name of the user who adds the book to their group shelf. The user could easily track their way back either to the Homepage, or to the previous results page.The user felt the logout button was very well placed and quite visible.
Screen 7: Quite clear about why this page appeared.
Screen 8: Clear
Screen 9: The user felt that each group should have a name, which should display across the books added to the group shelf. She felt that a drop-down feature should be available for the user to view books based on the group names (as each user can be involved in more than one group work)
Screen 10: Clear
User 2 interaction:
Screen 1: The login page was clear to the user.
Screen 2: User liked the features of adding his/her own picture, the availability of the friends list, the availability of the chat room, the segregation of the resources in the shelf. The user could easily find the search engine in the top of the screen and was quite happy about its placement. The user’s desire was to have the ipl support different languages. He suggested that if he is getting his personal space then why not have it in the language in which he is most comfortable. That will make the ipl more comfortable for him to use.
Screen 3: Quite clear about the search results display. The user understood how to view the details of any resource displayed in the results page.
Screen 4: The user was confused in the ‘On the shelf of’ section of the page. He could not understand how to navigate to either Abhijeet or Teena’s shelves. He felt that both Abhijeet and Teena should be hyperlinked so that he can easily navigate to their shelves. He did not understand what did the green and the grey colors indicated across Abhijeet and Teena’s names. He felt there should be some explanation on the page about what those icons meant. The user could easily make out how to add the book to the group shelf.
Screen 5: Was quite obvious for him.
Screen 6: The user was confused about who added the Designing Interactions book to his group shelf. He felt a need for a record of the ‘Date of addition’ to be listed across the book name and its details. He felt there should be a list and detailed view available, one for ‘Newly added resources’ and another for ‘Previously added resources’. The user was happy about the 2 buttons ‘Go back to search results’ and ‘Go to homepage’ and their placement in the page. The logout button was obvious for the user too.
Screen 7: The user felt there should be a confirmation message saying that the user is logged out of ipl or there could be a time delay of 5/10 seconds before the user is logged out, so that he comes to know that he has been logged out.
Screen 8: Clear
Screen 9: The user was confused about who added the books to his group shelf.
Screen 10: Clear
User 3 interaction:
Screen 1: The login page was clear to the user.
Screen 2: User was not clear whose friends is he viewing. Since it’s a library page, he was confused whether they were his friends or some library people or what. He was not clear whether the personal resources section was created by him or whether it was created for him by the librarians or his actions on the ipl compiled it for him. He felt the search box was not placed well and it was quite small in size too. He suggested that the search box should be ideally placed below the shelves, where it would be more easily viewable.
Screen 3: He was confused about how to navigate to the details of any of these resources. He felt that the resources should have a clear indicator, something like Google search engine provides, by which he can be sure where to take his mouse and on what to click.
Screen 4: The user was clear about how to add the book to his group shelf. He found the name “On the shelf of” confusing. He feels it should be renamed to something like “Also available on the shelf of”. He also feels that both Abhijeet and Teena are not hyper linked and so he does not know how to check their shelves. He feels there could be ethical issues in displaying the names of any users in the “On the shelf of” box, when searching for a resource. He feels unless and until the users are his friends their names should not show up in the ‘On the shelf of’ column.
Screen 5: Was quite obvious for him.
Screen 6: The user was confused about who had added the other books to his group shelf. The user was confused about how to logout. He did not find the Logout button obvious and so when asked about how to logout he felt he had to go back to the homepage and then click on some button having the logout information on it.
Screen 7: Clear
Screen 8: Obvious
Screen 9: The user was confused about who added the books to his group shelf.
Screen 10: Clear
The following walk through was conducted by Alex.
User 4
Step1: How do you log in? User explained how to log in correctly
Step2: How would you search for resources, in particular, resources related to HCI? User initially thought that links on the left side could be the way to navigate to a topic of interest, overlooking the fact that there is a search box on the page. After not finding the HCI topic in the list of links, the user found a search box and correctly suggested to type in a search topic in it.
How would you know that you logged in? User correctly determined his status by pointing at "Welcome Mark W".
Step3: How would you view a book abstract on HCI? User correctly clicked on HCI book link.
Step4: How would you add a book to the group shelf? User correctly clicked on "Add to the Group Shelf" link
How would you see the shelves of people who also have this book? User suggested to click on the ussernames of people under "On the Shelf Of" even though making a comment that it did not look clickable and he would not guess to click on these links if this question was not asked.
How would you tell that people who have the book you found are online? User correctly suggested that green color of the button might indicate that this user is online.
How would you contact these people? User said that to contact these people he probably has to click on their username, and on the next page he might see a form to send this person a message. Alternatively, he said he might try to hover over the username to see a menu to popup with the option to send a message to this user.
Step5: User correctly clicked on confirm button
Step6: How do you log out? User correctly clicked on logout button.
How do you go to the homepage? User correctly clicked on the Go to Homepage button, but was sure that he would go to site's home page, not his own homepage.
How do you add another book? User correctly clicked on the Go back to Search Results button.
Step7: I explained to the person I conducted a walkthrough with that he is now plays a role of another user.
Step8. How would you view a group shelf? User correctly clicked on Group Resources link.
Step9: How can you determine whom do you share a particular book with? User clicked on the book cover, suggesting he might see a page which would have this information. He made a comment that since the black color text was clickable on previous slides, he might try to click on book title as well, but it is somewhat he is not accustomed to do.
The following walk through was conducted by Mark.
User 5: Age group – (25-35years), Gender – Female.
Screen 1: User understood this was for login.
Screen2: After login, there was brief confusion over where to type search string for book (the chat window search box distracted the user in this regard).
Screen 3: It was clear to user that to view details for a book to click on the book hyperlink.
Screen 4: It was clear to user to click "Add to Group Shelf" button to perform that action
Screen 5: Confirm dialog was obvious to user
Screen 6: It was clear to user that she was looking at the group shelf
Screen 7: User understood this was another user logging in.
Screen 8: Again user understood that for this new user to view group shelf, the "group resources" link should be clicked
Screen 9: User saw book that was added previously.
Screen 10: User understood this was a logout.
Lessons learned from Heuristic evaluation:
The big lesson here is how difficult it is to clearly delineate a scenario/task for a user to perform on an interface. We initially started with what we thought was a simple scenario of adding a book or url to a group "bookshelf". After hearing that this was perhaps not enough of a scenario, or that there was not enough context in terms of users sharing these resources, we went in the opposite direction and added perhaps too much context on the interface. Our intent was to place the scenario in the context of other group resources such as chat. However, the classroom discussion revealed that these other resources distracted from our primary scenario. Our evaluators spent time figuring out how the additional resources worked and focused on those rather than on our primary scenario of adding books to a shelf.
In our new design we have attempted to more finely hone the user's focus in on the primary scenario, while also leaving it in the context of other group functionality that would be available if our conceptual design were fully fleshed out.
--Shraddha 13:29, 7 March 2008 (EST)
- Return to Designing IPL Social Interaction
