GR3 - Paper Prototyping

(Note: We have tentatively changed our name to "Photo Circles" to emphasize the idea of circles of friends and de-emphasize the concept of albums, because it seems to be the biggest learnability issue that the users have. The name may be changed again.)

Prototype photos

Briefing

We introduced Spotlight to our users, telling them that it is a collaborative photo sharing site. We explained that this is a social site that can be used to share photos, similar to Facebook because people can view photos and comment on them. However, we informed the user that our site is different because it has the added benefit that friends can be allowed to add, delete, or rearrange photos in addition to just viewing the photos. We described that our site is similar to Google Docs, but for photos, where the owner of a circle can allow contributions from their friends.

Scenario Tasks

The tasks we asked our users to perform were as follows:

1. Create an account.
2. Create a new circle of friends and add photos to your circle.
3. View a circle, either one that was newly added by a friend or one that has updates.
4. View a photo and comment on it.
5. Add photos to an existing circle.
6. Change share settings on one of your circles, either by adding more people, or changing the privacy settings.

We came up with two hypothetical personas that we gave to our users so they could get in the correct mindset while using our site. The first persona is a college student who is new to Photo Circle and wants to create a new circle to share photos with friends. This person was asked to perform tasks 1, 2, and 6. The second persona was a college student who was added to a circle and wanted to view newly posted photos in the circle. This person was asked to perform tasks 3, 4, and 5.

Observations

The main problem we found was that some of our users were confused by the concept of circles in our site. We had to explain that instead of albums, we just had circles of friends that you shared photos with. We decided to disregard albums because we wanted a lack of hierarchy, allowing us to maintain simplicity in our site. When we debriefed our users, some of them liked the simplicity after it was explained, seeing that it was very similar to the way Google Docs lack hierarchy and require emails to be added each time a new document wants to be shared. However, some people preferred having hierarchy, thinking that it was more organized if under the umbrella of circles, albums could be made to further organize photos.

Another problem our users brought up was being able to label groups of friends to allow for easy sharing when new circles are created. One user also brought up the issue of having circles with the same name. For example, if the user created a circle with one name, there is nothing stopping the user's friend from creating a circle with the same name and sharing it with the user. The user asked for a way to easily differentiate between these circles.

We noticed that most people were very comfortable dragging and dropping photos into albums, and found it intuitive that they could select many photos to drag into the window. However, one user asked what would happen if you dragged a photo on top of another photo, specifically where that photo would be placed. The user was also confused why there wasn't a finish button. Even though adding automatically finishes once uploading of dragged photos is done, we noticed that users like having a button for confirmation.

One user preferred having the view photos page and the upload photos page to be two separate pages. Moreover, when viewing updates from the main page, they wanted a link to the circle rather than only having the option to close the photo and return to the main page. They also wanted a more obvious way of exiting the photo to return to the main page when viewing updates other than just clicking outside the photo to close the box.

We also noticed that nobody tried to rearrange or delete photos. We didn't give these specific instructions because we wanted to see if it was obvious that this could be done, but we realized we needed a better affordance so users knew it could be done.

Another user asked for the ability to make captions for photos, preferring this over comments as the owner of the photo.

Finally, the last suggestion that was given to use was to allow people to create profiles for their accounts, and to allow users to view others' profiles. This gave us the idea to show your connections to other users when you click on their usernames.

Prototype iteration

The first prototype was a sketch of our "simplistic design". It worked well for the basic functions such as viewing photos and creating circles, but we learned from the users' suggestions to improve the minor details. The biggest change was for the "create new circle" page. Users requested a better suggestion interaction when adding individual members, so we changed the wording of instructions to suggest that it is also possible to add existing groups, which will be expanded to individual members upon selection. Another change was on the front page, where users suggested that a Facebook style news feed may work better. Therefore we added that element on the right side banner of front page. Lastly, we made minor changes on the circle/upload photo page to show a persistent box that will accept dragging actions, instead of just at the background.