Prototype photos
Prototype iteration Round 1
This is the original menu for Prototype Round 1. Most people despite given the arrow, were confused as to what to do with it. They tried clicking on the items in the menu, rather than moving the wheel/Lazy Susan affordance.
Prototype iteration Round 2 (this has a more detailed round of pictures)
The main loading page for both iterations which appears when people open up menu.io. The rotating circle appears until all the restaurants nearby are loaded.
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The page loads all the restaurants nearby, the type of food they offer underneath, and the distance they are from the user. The user can click Flour Cafe to open up the relevant menu as described in Task 1.
The main menu shows the current selection of items on the top, and the current selection of Drinks (with a summary attached).
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Removing the vegetarian filter (Task 4) and scrolling through the menu brings the user to the portabello mushroom to read its details (Task 5).
Briefing
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Welcome to menu.io! We are innovating in the domain of Restaurants, specifically menus, trying to expand on the lack of interactivity and dynamic content. We’ll be taking you through one use scenario of our app’s basic functionality. Remember that this test isn’t testing you, the user, but rather the interface and its usability. Feel free to think out loud so we know how you feel about each element of the interface. You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and give us higher-level feedback when we’re done. Thanks!
Scenario
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We gave our users tasks similar to those given in our scenario from GR2.
Task 1:
You have just arrived at your favorite restaurant, Flour Cafe, and want to see the menu. Open up the app and select Flour Cafe.
Task 2:
You want to eat a sandwich. Open up the menu that only shows sandwich items.
Task 3:
Apply filters to the menu so that you only see vegetarian and gluten-free items.
Task 4:
You realize that you are not actually interested in gluten-free items. Remove the gluten-free filter.
Task 5:
Find the portabello mushroom sandwich and reading it’s ingredients.
Observations (First iteration)
User 1
- Waited carefully on the loading screen
- Picked Flour Cafe correctly
- Instead of spinning the design wheel, click the food item and expected it to change
- Was confused, but then realised spinning would make it change
- Expected the food item to go to the middle when clicked
- The tag-tip helped him move to the tags to center
- Got the gluten-free filter correct
- Passed all the tasks
User 2
- Waited appropriately for the loading
- Liked the big affordance of the spinner for loading
- Got the task for the GPS error correct (we simulated a GPS error here)
- Likes the wheel aesthetically as a metaphor
- Finds the wheel confusing
- Not sure what the center can do (tags have to be dragged here, or should the food item change, or both?)
- Liked the ability of filters to adjust food preferences
- Passed all the tasks
User 3
- Did not understand the general spinning/loading screen
- Could not figure out the type of restaurant
- Dragged the tags naturally (said was possible without looking at the tool tip)
- Was able to remove filter successfully
- Not sure about the wheel click, but was certain of the wheel selection because of the provided downarrow
- Passed all the tasks
Prototype Iteration
For our first iteration, we used our riskiest prototype. We felt that the scroll wheel would be a fun feature for users to play with and we liked the fact that it would be relatively novel to our user interface. We also liked the idea of a metaphor to the Lazy Susan on a real dinner table. We knew it was a risk, but we wanted to see whether users would be able to figure it out easily. However, each user during our first iteration told us the same thing: the scroll wheel was confusing. The first said that it was hard to tell that it was a scroll wheel at all, and we figured that was because of the low fidelity of our paper prototype. We tried adding in an arrow at the top of the wheel to indicate that it was meant to scroll. Even though this helped users recognize it, they mentioned that it would be frustrating to use on a tiny cell phone because the border icons would be crowded. We ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth making a higher fidelity (i.e. computer) prototype to see whether users could recognize the scroll wheel feature.
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The GPS feature was well received by every user. We did one trial with a user where the GPS “glitched” and the user was forced to enter their restaurant into the keypad. This too was received well. We didn’t feel a need to change the GPS feature from one iteration to the next.
Observations (Second iteration)
User 1
- Wanted to see the loading progress, rather than just a wheel
- Picked Flour cafe correctly
- Got the scrolling on the food items correct
- Was initially confused about the submenu, but then the large afforandance of the item selection made it possible to find the sandwich correctly
- Thought the flow was good, but felt the arrows were a bit weird at first
- Passed all tasks
User 2
- Selected Flour cafe correctly
- Less reactive of a user
- Expected a specific list of items to be display, when clicking on a particular submenu and not an opening of that submenu
- Correct selection on food
- Was confused about the particular submenu
- Felt that interface was simple (in a good way)
- Wanted a better afforandance on what was applied, and what was not
User 3
- A slower user, browsed thoughtfully
- Wanted to explore
- Felt that location with a lot of restaurants might be harder and take longer to load
- Wanted one page with all the items, felt it could be hard to remember selections
- Was confused about how to rotate through menu initially, but got the hang of it after he looked at the arrows
- Desired price to be in the interface more specifically
- Passed all the tasks
Reflection