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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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Hovering over a poster caused jerky behavior and we fixed it.
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.A user pointed out that an efficient way to add items to the calendar would also be to drag the thumbnails of the posters of interest into a virtual calendar at the bottom of the screen.
Despite the fact that a focused poster can be dismissed by clicking outside the poster, most of our users consistently dismissed it with the 'x' at the top right corner. This 'x' was small and hence poster dismissal proved to be somewhat difficult. It would be necessary to increase the size of this element.
When selecting a poster from the file system, a user first changed the view mode (of Window Explorer) away from 'Detail View' to 'Tile View' so he could preview the images before selecting them. This was a gentle reminder that a mode that allows previewing in the file explorer should be set by default.
For some reason, most users when trying to scribble clicked on the color picker first regardless of whether they needed to select a new color. This indicates that the users were not aware that scribbling could be done immediately after focusing and some means to increase the visibility of the mode may be needed here.
The idea of swiping a card for identity seemed confusing to some users. In particular, a non-native English speaker mostly ignored all written instructions (including those for swiping cards) indicating that in a diverse environment such as MIT's we may need to cut down on textual information.
One of the users was confused about which view was currently selected indicating that our efforts to distinguish the selected view (in response to our heuristic evaluations) may not have been sufficient.
A user had difficulty finding an added poster because she temporarily forgot the date she added it to and this is a scenario that we will probably need to deal with in practice. First of all, there needs to be some feedback indicating that the add operation was successful (in response to another user's comments) and this feedback should provide a way to optionally let the user view the added poster in its right place in the application.
One user assumed at first that the color picker was for changing the background color of a poster we therefore need to make its purpose (changing the scribble color) more obvious.
One user did not save after scribbling (although, another user did so without thought). For safety reasons, we may want to remind users to save their scribbling or continuously save it in the background.
Implementation
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.
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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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Task 3*: *Find a poster you like, add it to your calendar and scribble on it.
Observation
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.
A user pointed out that an efficient way to add items to the calendar would also be to drag the thumbnails of the posters of interest into a virtual calendar at the bottom of the screen.
Despite the fact that a focused poster can be dismissed by clicking outside the poster, most of our users consistently dismissed it with the 'x' at the top right corner. This 'x' was small and hence poster dismissal proved to be somewhat difficult. It would be necessary to increase the size of this element.
When selecting a poster from the file system, a user first changed the view mode (of Window Explorer) away from 'Detail View' to 'Tile View' so he could preview the images before selecting them. This was a gentle reminder that a mode that allows previewing in the file explorer should be set by default.
For some reason, most users when trying to scribble clicked on the color picker first regardless of whether they needed to select a new color. This indicates that the users were not aware that scribbling could be done immediately after focusing and some means to increase the visibility of the mode may be needed here.
The idea of swiping a card for identity seemed confusing to some users. In particular, a non-native English speaker mostly ignored all written instructions (including those for swiping cards) indicating that in a diverse environment such as MIT's we may need to cut down on textual information.
One of the users was confused about which view was currently selected indicating that our efforts to distinguish the selected view (in response to our heuristic evaluations) may not have been sufficient.
A user had difficulty finding an added poster because she temporarily forgot the date she added it to and this is a scenario that we will probably need to deal with in practice. First of all, there needs to be some feedback indicating that the add operation was successful (in response to another user's comments) and this feedback should provide a way to optionally let the user view the added poster in its right place in the application.
One user assumed at first that the color picker was for changing the background color of a poster we therefore need to make its purpose (changing the scribble color) more obvious.
One user did not save after scribbling (although, another user did so without thought). For safety reasons, we may want to remind users to save their scribbling or continuously save it in the background.
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 * **