...
| Anchor | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
5. Prototype Iteration
Our first design was primarily intended to maximize flexibility and efficiency. However, the tests showed that the users were overwhelmed and confused by the amount of information and possible actions they could take from any given page. This is reflected in the designs of the login page (i.e. the radio buttons that allowed users to jump to a specific tab when they login) and of the home page (i.e. the displays to view/add/edit the Food List and Meal Log). The challenge in redesigning these pages was to simplify them without significantly decreasing efficiency. For the login page, we found it was sufficient to completely eliminate the options to jump to a specific tab upon login since that feature did not seem to improve efficiency by a large enough of an amount to justify the confusion that it caused. Our solution for the home page was to collapse the Food List and Meal Log into two buttons, "Add/Edit Groceries" and "Add Meal." When the user clicks a button, the appropriate display expands. This presents a tradeoff between efficiency and learnability. This design is slightly less efficient than the first design (requires one extra click to complete a task), but it is much more learnable.
In the same vein, the analytics page was also intended to optimize efficiency by automatically displaying three graphs side-by-side in anticipation of expert users' desire to simultaneously look at and compare multiple graphs. However, the tests showed that users found this to be overwhelming especially given that most beginner users only want to see one graph at a time and do not want to compare multiple graphs yet. They also found the three graphs to be confusing since none of the graphs were labeled to indicate what the various buttons and menus were changing. Thus, we redesigned the page so that it would initially load only one graph, which the user could modify. To accommodate the expert users, we added a button that would allow them to display additional graphs next to the initial one. In this design, all options and graphs are clearly labeled.