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Currently, photos are reordered linearly on our site. Each row of photos wraps around to the next row, and so moving a photo just pushes the other photos up linearly. However, our original plan was to allow users to reorder photos in 2 dimensions, specifying where they wanted it in space. When we began our implementation, we realized that this would be very complicated because we would have to deal with edge cases, considerations when there was a blank area, where we would put photos if a new upload was taking place, etc. It seemed like it would be sufficient, cleaner, and much easier for the linear implementation we ended up with.
Evaluation
For our user test, we briefed our users first with a general description of our website. We told them that it was a collaborative photo sharing site that could be used to share photos for viewing and commenting, similar to Facebook. We also told the users that our site was different because it has the added benefit that friends can be allowed to add, delete, or rearrange photos in addition to just viewing the photos.
The tasks we asked our users to perform were as follows:
- Log in to an existing account.
- Browse the website.
- Create a new group and invite people to join with emails.
- Upload photos to the new group.
- View a group. Add more photos, delete photos, and/or reorganize the photos.
- View a photo and comment on it.
The users we found all had sufficient experience with uploading photos to a social networking site and enjoyed viewing other people's photos on these sites. This is the description of our main user since our site is meant for people who take pictures, upload pictures, and want to share photos with friends.
The first usability problem that we found was that you cannot make an account. We focused on the functionality of our website and did not have time to add this feature. We also foresaw issues because we did not have an email server to actually send out invites when a person who didn't have an account was invited to a group. Another usability issue was that you cannot delete groups or leave a group.
Other than that, we found that users had a bit of time discovering how to delete photos and that it was possible to rearrange photos. If we had more time, we would have created more affordances for these two features.
Reflection
With our initial computer prototype, we had high fidelity with the look of our website. We realized that we should have focused more on testing functionality than aesthetics for our site. Getting general layout and spacing of the website was useful, but we found that fine aesthetics such as colors, effects, pixels, etc. should not have been tested at such an early stage because they were easily altered. Thus, if we could do it again, we would have focused on having higher fidelity with functionality and lower fidelity with look and feel because we found that changing the look was a lot easier than working out issues with our functionality.
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