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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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We also contemplated saving the sketches as the user sketched instead of waiting till the user was done sketching but that approach was more bug-prone and given the time limitations, we opted for the less bug-prone approach of saving when the user clicked the Save button.
*** 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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- rfid. we had to explore several ways to get rfid working with javascript and enable it to talk to the django server. we had to make three prototypes, two of which failed before getting a viable one. the working prototype came together the week before GR5, limiting our ability to take further advantage of it.
Evaluation
The ideal user test would have been conducted by moving the board to a part of the building with high human traffic and the test conducted with people who were attracted to the board in the first place. We however did not have that luxury because the board was fixed in place at the group space of a research group. We however managed to conduct a test that was very revealing and helpful.
Choice of users
We were looking for users that were representative a the bulk of the population in MIT: students and we had 3 users: 1 female postdoc who recently completed her PhD in New York, 1 male PhD student working in CSAIL and **Tristan fill in here**. In order not to focus solely on students, we performed a demo of the project for a professor as well and got some helpful comments from him as well.
User preparation
We utilized our briefings and tasks (outlined below) from the paper prototyping exercise with one slight modification.
Briefing
PosterBoard is a project that aims to increase visibility of event posters by encouraging interaction with the posters.
What you are looking at is an electronic poster board that will be installed up in a public place like the ground floor of the Stata center.
Scenario Tasks
Task 1*: *You have come across this poster board in Stata Center. Describe 5 things you can do with it. Interact with it for two minutes. (We utilized this open ended task to get a sense for which features of the poster board were discoverable as well as those that might be expected).
Task 2*: *You have a USB drive in your possession. Add a poster from the USB onto the poster board.
Task 3*: *Find a poster you like, add it to your calendar and scribble on it.
Reflection
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 ***