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Usability problems we have found include:

Issue #1:

Problem: One user, when attempting to search for and view photos, was frustrated that there was no obvious way to get to photos.  That is, the only way to find photos was to search for them and she had no idea what to search for.  The user guessed at a few possibilities for search terms and had some success, but the user was frustrated that there wasn't a way to access a list of photos.

Solution: One solution is to present some section of the photo content on the home page along with links to navigate through the larger set.  Our initial design for the home page (and the one we stuck with throughout the project) derived from the need to help users come up with search term ideas.  This was made nearly obsolete by the helpful auto-complete feature we implemented and, thus, the current home page should have been removed in favor of a home page that presented more photos and more ways to explore the larger set of photos.

Issue #2:

Problem: The photo view page allows comments, but does not allow captions.  One user has the opportunity to post the first comment on her photo; however, the user would much prefer to be able to post a caption under the photo so that is distinct from all the comments.

Solution: This would be easily implemented by adding an extra text field to the upload form and adding a caption in the photo display page. One alternative solution is to offer a comment field in the upload form, and display the comment in the info box on the right hand side of the photo.

Issue #2#3:

Problem: One user would like there to be a field in the upload form for submitting a link.  Since it doesn't make sense to post an entire recipe on the website, she'd like to be able to link to it.

Solution: This could be implemented in the same way as photo caption. However, this might present some security issues and, at the least, the website should ask users who try to click the link if they are aware of the possibility of a malicious link.

Issue #3:

Problem: One user, when attempting to search for and view photos, was frustrated that there was no obvious way to get to photos.  That is, the only way to find photos was to search for them and she had no idea what to search for.  The user guessed at a few possibilities for search terms and had some success, but the user was frustrated that there wasn't a way to access a list of photos.

Solution: One solution is to present some section of the photo content on the home page along with links to navigate through the larger set.  Our initial design for the home page (and the one we stuck with throughout the project) was to derived from a need to help users come up with search term ideas.  This was made nearly obsolete by the helpful auto-complete feature we implemented and, thus, the current home page should have been removed in favor of a home page that presented more photos and more ways to explore the larger set of photos.

Issue #4:

Problem: One user wanted to change his username while he was browsing the site using his account.

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Problem: The "search by photographer" only searches for username. One user tried to search by full first and last names (that he provided in the registration), but couldn't.

Solution: We could have made the "search by photographer" to search for both first and last namesIt would be better if the user can search using either real name (first and last names) or username. One possible solution is to offer autocompletion of the form "First-name Last-name (Username)", and allow the autocomplete system to look up the typed query in both usernames and real names.

However, searching by first and last name can lead to ambiguity since several people can share the same real name. One solution is to have a page that list all users with the same name as the input query, and then let the user choose the name he wants.

Issue #6:

Problem: One user didn't discover our autocomplete feature, as he was typing too fast into the search box for the feature to manifest itself. As a result, he was left wondering what query he should use to search by type.

Solution: We couldn't really do much about this, since the delay is internal in the implementation.

Issue #7:

Problem: One user typed multiple words into the search box, thinking that it is similar to popular search engines' search boxes that can search multiple terms.

Solution:

Issue #8:

Problem: After one user filled out the registration form and clicked the Submit button, the home page appears. The user got confused, and complained that he has to log in manually.

Solution: Instead of redirecting to the front page, the website would log in the user automatically, bring the user to the user's page, and display some message to help the user get started.

Issue #9:

Problem: One user have trouble finding the place for deleting the posted photo. He searched for a delete photo button in the photo view page until he finally realized that he must use the small \[X\] link in the user's profile page to delete photos.

Solution:

Reflection

Discuss what you learned over the course of the iterative design process. If you did it again, what would you do differently? Focus in this part not on the specific design decisions of your project (which you already discussed in the Design section), but instead on the meta-level decisions about your design process: your risk assessments, your decisions about what features to prototype and which prototype techniques to use, and how you evaluated the results of your observations.

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After we finished our implementation, we have received several comments from our TA and user testing.  ___________________( Later, this part shall be filled )_________________