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We forwent using QR codes for adding an event to a user's calendar settling instead for sending an email reminder to the user on swiping their RFID card. *** event organizers didn't want to create them either ***
One of the users could not find the button to select the poster file so we made sure that the button was clearly set apart with a sufficient color contrast
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User Testing. If we were going to make further changes, we would make the following changes based on user testing feedback ***NEED TO ADD SEVERITY*** and possible solutions.
We would increase the information scent because some users pointed out and we also observed that users did not understand the capabilities of the board and various modes of interaction possible. Interestingly, a user pointed this out during the paper prototype and we decided then to show a demo video whenever the board is idle and in standby mode. However, on further consideration we dropped the idea because having a standby mode would be a trade off between giving the posters maximum visibility time and the previous aim of educating new users. We now think that a more appropriate approach would be to display tooltip like messages that would point out interesting features of the board. That idea too has to be carefully implemented because it has a high propensity to become a nuisance for experienced users and unlike system possessing authentication, we cannot selectively turn it off or on per user. If we implemented a personalized board as initially envisioned, we could reduce the nuisance-capacity somewhat.
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We implemented the project using a SmartBoard optical touchscreen that plugged into any computer's serial/USB ports for input and VGA port for output. The backend was implemented using Python using the Django web application framework and SQLite database. We also wrote a standalone websockets server for feeding the inputs from the RFID card reader to the frontend. The frontend was implemented using HTML, CSS and Javascript with a heavy reliance on the JQuery and JQuery UI libraries as well as a few other libraries.
*** Need to talk about how we used RFID reader to remove need for typing ***
- the actual board was not functional until the week before GR5 was due. It was missing a crucial connecting cable to allow the smart board to communicate with the computer. After several tens of hours of conversations with Customer Service and three sets of incorrect cables, we finally got the board working. So resolution, fit to big screen cow;don't happen very well.
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The project turned out to be much more hardware focused than we expected since our application was heavily dependent and limited by the SmartBoard and RFID equipment. As mentioned above, the SmartBoard was not fully functional until the last week of classes.
*** talk about personalization: possibilities, why we didn't do it. How would we do it ***