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Thank you for participating in this user study. LocaShare is an application that allows you to share your location data in ways that are different from existing services like Foursquare and Latitude. It gives you an ability to set preferences on what type of location information friends and companies can view about you. Also, you can have a look at your information that those entities (companies/friends) can see about you.

Tasks:

We are now going to 

*Task 1: *View Bob’s information (current location and historical location)

*Task 2: *View the information that Bob can see about you and edit the time period when he can view you.

*Task 3: *Add John as a new friend of yours. 

*Task 4: *View offers and select the 5% discount that Star Market is offering.

Observations:

User

View Bob's information

View what information Bob can see about you
and edit the time period when he can view you.

Add John as a new friend

View offers and select the 5%
discount that Star Market is offering.

Suggestions

#1

N/A

‧ Learnability:
1. Different mental model: She attempted
to click on her own profile picture to view
 how Bob could see about him rather than
 clicking on Bob’s page and choose
“My LocaShare”. The user expressed
that since it is how others view my information,
it should be shown in my page instead of others
page.

2. Affordance mismatch: A profile picture has
the affordance to be clickable; however,
our design does not support this function.

3. Misleading arrows/bad affordance: She
was confused by “< My LocaShare” button
and “> Bob’s LocaShare” button. The
direction of the arrows is hard to understand,
the text on the button does not help user to
make the decision as well. Also, the texture
of the button does not make the user feel like
it is a clickable button.

4. Unclear affordance: An empty map in the
editing page makes user think it is a text
box and want to type something in it.

Visibility:
1. User was unable to know the edits were
only applied to a specific friend.

‧ Learnability:
1. Different conceptual model:
User was unable to find the
search bar for adding a
friend since clicking on
“My Friends” does not
make sense ("John is not my
friend at this point").

‧ Learnability:
1. Affordance: User tried clicking
on the box to the left of "Star
Market" as it looks more like
a button than an icon.

User wondered if
it was possible to
create
user-specific
categories.
Also, how to
select multiple
offers at once.

#2

 N/A

‧ Learnability
1. Different mental model: It is more
natural to name the user as “Me”
instead of “Joe”.

2. Inconsistency/different mental
model: We noticed that user habitually
assumed that the picture on the
upper left corner should be me rather
than my friend. Putting user’s profile
picture on the upper right corner is
externally inconsistent with other
social apps.

3. Lack of feedback: The map does not
provide enough feedback about the
coverage of a location. A circle
(with different radius) below the bubble
would help solve this problem. Also,
user was puzzled about what would
happen to the coverage of a location
after choosing “city” or “state”, would
the radius of a location change as well?

4. Unclear wording: What does "MTWTFSS"
mean?

 ‧ Efficiency
1. Aggregation: User suggested that the
application should be able to support a
function to hide/show all the charts,
instead of clicking on each chart one
by one in order to hide/show it.

‧  Learnability
1. Different mental model: User
was unable navigate from the
home screen for the “Add John”
task since the user is expecting
an “Add friend +” button on the
home screen. User did not
expect to click on “My friends”
to add a new friend.

2. Lack of feedback:
User was expecting some
feedback would be provided
after adding John, things like
a successful or failure alert.

‧ Learnability
1. Different mental model: User
expected that upon clicking on
the little arrow below “0.4 mi”,
the map/direction to Star
Market would be provided
(since it was directly below
the distance).

2. Affordance: User tried to
click on the "Star" symbol to
see the offers but it was an
icon instead of a button.

‧ Visibility
1. User asked if the user was
not interested in utilizing any
offers right now, is it possible
to provide a way to hide it and
click on "My Deals" to view it
at a later point in time.

 

#3

‧ Learnability 
1. Different mental model:
The two charts seem to
convey similar information.

‧ Learnability
1. Different mental model: User attempted
 to click on his own profile picture to view
 how Bob could see about him rather
 than clicking on Bob’s page and choose
 “My LocaShare”. (Similar thing
 happened to user 1.)

2. Inconsistency: User asked why my profile
 picture shows up when viewing Bob’s
 information. It is externally inconsistent with
 other social apps because they would not
 show your pictures when viewing others page. 

3. Inconsistency: User might expect to have a 
profile page which can be accessible by clicking
on his/her own profile picture just like other
social apps.

4.Inconsistency: The charts seem to be a
different kind of setting from "when" and "what."
It would be better to use another screen for
setting the charts.

5. No immediate feedback: User asked after I
set these settings, what would happen?

‧ Efficiency
1. Aggregation: User asked “If I want to hide
my daily/weekly and monthly stats, do I have
to click "Hide" 3 times?”

‧ Visibiltiy
1. The search bar under the map is not salient.

2. The "neighborhood/city/state" did not
convey the look of radio buttons to the user.

‧ Learnability
1. Inconsistency: User found
the way to add a new friend is
externally inconsistent with the
way to add a new contact on
a mobile phone. On a mobile
phone (contact list), when you
want to add users, you “add”
them instead of “searching”
for them.

2. Unclear affordance: User
attempted to add a friend by
clicking on the “empty box” in
“friends near you”, since it is
intuitive to fill in an empty box
by adding something in it.

‧ Learnability
1. Jargon: The user mentioned
that “Select” sounded rather
ambiguous.

1. User asked “am I
adding Star
Market as one
of my friends?”

2. User 3 asked if the
 "deals functionality"
 could be turned into
 a social experience
 ("I would like to
share my deals with Bob").

...