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- We decided to take away the "Download" button altogether. This makes it a little harder for users to acquire the QR code that has been generated. We made this decision so that the user was not redirected away from the site at any time because we could not figure out any other way to do it.
- We decided to add red text indicating an error in text fields so that users would not why their submissions were being rejected. Our user testing indicated that this was a good idea but would be more helpful if it were more visible and possibly located next to the field that had the error.
- QR codes are regenerated each time a new size or color is set. This was simpler than recoloring the image in JavaScript and thus we chose this way of doing it. However, based on user testing, this was a bad idea because users get confused when the QR code keeps changing.
Evaluation
Getting the users
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Usability Problems and Solutions
- Download Obscurity - Catastrophic- Users were unsure of how to actually download the QR code. There was a note saying to right-click and download the image, but users got stuck because the term "download" was not consistent with the supplied option of "Save Image As...". In order to fix this, we could simply change the line of text telling the user how to download and make the syntax consistent. Further, we could simply email the image to the user when we email them the Admin link so that they do not have to worry about downloading it. However, this means that supplying an email would not longer be optional.
- Size Restriction - Minor - The user is restricted to certain sizes when re-sizing the QR image. We
Reflection
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- limit the size of the image to be between 1 and 5 inches; however, we never alert the user of this until they made the mistake of supplying an out or range size. We can fix this by putting an indicator that we only accept certain sizes. Further, we could fix this be having the size be a slide rule. Thus, the user can slide to the exact allowed size that they want but will have no way of getting outside those bounds. This would also supply them with sufficient feedback as to what sizes are allowed.
- Recolor Confusion - Major - Users were a little confused that every time they clicked "Set Color" a new QR code appeared. As mentioned in the Implementation Section, we did this on purpose. To avoid this, we could made re-size and re-color happen on the QR images themselves rather than trying to create a new QR image each time the button was clicked. As a simpler, but not desired, solution we could have written a note to the user explaining that the codes would continually change but still work, so they should not worry that the images keep changing.