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- Cosmetic (graphic design): Two users pointed out that the add/delete group button looks too similar to the google maps navigation buttons. This issue however did not affect their ability to figure out what the buttons were for, so the issue was deemed cosmetic. To alleviate this issue, we could have affordances for those buttons other than a ' + ' and ' - '. For example, the button for adding a group could read ' + Group ' instead of just ' + '.
- Minor (visibility): One user initially thought the status text field was for searching. This is because the status text field says "your status message" when it's blank, but once a status message is submitted, there are no other hints what that text field is for. To alleviate this issue, there is enough room on the left-hand side of the status bar to include the label "Status: "
- Major(visibility): It was pointed out that managing friends and hiding / un-hiding from a friend is delayed with no feedback. The response time for these features are too long, and to fix this issue we would have to modify our backend. Local variables would get modified when information is submitted to the server, so that the user can see the result of their actions right away as opposed to having to wait for a response from the server before changed are made visible.
Our pilot testing gave us some good insight on some user interface issues, but more importantly assured us that our testing method was clear and concise enough to be used for our final user testing.
User Testing Results
User testing was conducted on three students who have never taken either course and have never been educated in user interface design through any other sources. These students were recruited simply by asking friends if they would like to participate in our user testing and letting them know what the time commitment would be and what would be expected of them before they agreed. The results of our user testing proved to be much more interesting than our pilot testing. Some of the issues our users had were unexpected, and it was surprising that each had the same exact intuitions. Our user testing brought to light the following issues.
- When logging in, none of our three users clicked on the mood icons to login. The simply typed in the given username and password and hit enter. Our application allows this and will default the user's mood to "Adventurous" if they do not pick one. Upon being told how the login was intended to work, one user replied that she would have never thought that those icons had a purpose other than decoration......... state level of severity, hueristic, possible solution
- All three users had issues discovering how to create a group. Two of the users took significantly longer to complete this task than any other task, and one user opted to be told how to do it. All three users commented that they thought the ' + ' and ' - ' signs meant that the buttons were meant for zoom functionality on the map. On user also commented that it did not help that the buttons were separated from the group tabs, as opposed to just being right below.
- When tasked with hiding from a friend, all three users