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Unfortunately, the dynamic sizing and resizing of the graph didn’t work for lower screen resolutions, which led to some usability problems. Users had to scroll the page to see the rest of the graph and the legend.
Evaluation
The facilitator briefed the user on the purpose of DailyDigest and how user testing would proceed. After the briefing, she gave the users a list of four tasks to perform:
- View all the vegetables you ate over the past week
- Record what you had for lunch today
- Add an item to your grocery list
- View the cost of your breakfasts over the past month
She also told them to speak aloud their thoughts while going through the interface to allow us to pinpoint usability problems. Then the facilitator and observer watched them complete the tasks.
We found our users by asking students who were in the vicinity when were started conducting user tests. They represent different groups of our user population: those who rely on a dining plan, those who often order out, and those who frequently cook for themselves.
On the Meals page, one problem users helped us identify was the “Add Meal” button. It did not pass the squint test, and users (used to Google Calendar) first tried to actually double click on the calendar interface to add a meal. We might solve this problem by using colors or size to make the button stand out more, and we might find a way to implement adding meals by double clicking on the calendar.
On the Groceries page, the biggest problem that our users had was with finding how to add an item. Currently, the “Add Item” field is in the very bottom of the list. The most obvious fix would be to move that field to the top of the list. Additionally, some users expected a button as was on the Meals page. That would add internal consistency and make it more obvious how to add items.
On the Analytics page, the biggest problem was understanding how to control the graph. In particular, we realized that our labels “Food Groups” and “Meals” didn’t convey many affordances for their actual purpose. Easier to understand labels would help here.
Reflection
We should have done more paper prototypes and earlier iterations before moving into the computer prototypes. We kept coming up with new ideas, and we never had opportunity to test these ideas on actual users. Because of this, our design suffered unnecessary complexity, both in the implementation and in the front-end.
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