...
Problems discovered and possible Solutions:
Reflection
It was extremely valuable for our group to carry through an iterative design process from beginning to end. We learned a great deal about the strengths of rapid-prototyping and constant user evaluation. In most of the Course VI classes we take at MIT, there is usually some process, but it is never as deliberate or as user-centered as the iterative design we performed for this project. For example, none of us had paper-prototyped before, but we'll all likely use this tactic at least once more in the future. The idea of using quick, low-fidelity early prototypes is not exactly novel, but the implementation was an eye-opening experience for us. Involving the users at each iteration really helped to focus our group on improving the design for usability. Our final implementation has come a long way from our first brainstorming session in the basement of Stata.
We initially came up with the idea for PickFind as an online planner for basketball games. We knew that we wanted to solve the problem of inefficiency in pick-up basketball organization. A good decision we made at this step in the process was not to become too attached to any single idea. As we were brainstorming, we just threw features up on the board to get things going. The beginnings of a website started to coalesce, but we didn't not rule anything out either. At this point, we had several decent ideas to build on in parallel.
Once we got to storyboarding, we put together our ideas into cohesive outlines. Each of us took ownership for a few ideas and incorporated them into one of three storyboards. If we could do it again, we would have made a better effort to come up with our storyboards independently before we shared our ideas. By pulling from the same pool of ideas, we didn't take full advantage of three different minds with three different creative abilities. In the future, we would try to think of unique ideas before consulting with each other so that our own perspectives would each be brought to the table undiluted.
In the prototyping stage, we started with a paper model, then moved on to a computer mock-up. The paper prototype surprisingly took a while to put together although it was by no means a high fidelity prototype. During user testing, it was difficult to simulate the full functionality of our site, especially the tricks we wanted to pull with javascript and AJAX techniques. Next time, we might use a smaller paper prototype to speed up the iterative process so that we could make more changes on the fly. Nonetheless, we received good feedback from our testers that we were able to reflect in our computer prototyping. With our computer prototype we were able to implement a lot more of the features that made our site more intuitive. We added several tooltips so that users could clarify the intent of forms and fields on our website. The one major challenge with the computer prototype was that we didn't have a true back end supporting all of our data manipulation.
With our final design, our group really felt like we were able to accomplish most of the design objectives that we set out to achieve. Logistically, we underestimated the code complexity of our site. If we could do it again, we would definitely use a SVN repository for our version control. Throughout the process, our observations helped guide our design to be focused on the user experience. Our group's philosophy was to try to balance the severity of the user feedback with the feasibility of the implementation. In the end, we are very satisfied with PickFind and have already started to refer some of our friends to try it out.