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- Task #1: Determine how do you owe katrina
- Task #2: Determine how much marco owe you
- Task #3: * *You You went to Urban Outfitters with yolo. He was short on cash and promised to pay you back so you spotted him $5. Create a new transaction that reflects this.
- Task #4: You went to grab dessert with Alex and Jackie that you initially paid for. The total bill (you included) cost $12 and you’ve decided to split evenly. Create a new transaction that reflects this.
- Task #5: You want to see all the transactions you’ve had with alex; navigate to the summary page with Alex.
- Task #6: alex has paid you back for the dessert trip you went on earlier. Mark that transaction as “settled”
- Task #7: katrina posted a transaction stating that you owe her $3.25 for midnight snacks at verdes, but you’ve already paid her back! Mark that transaction as “disputed”
- Task #8: (a) start a new transaction and add marco, eugene, katherine, and aaron. (b) you then realize that eugene and katherine actually weren’t involved in the transaction.. remove them from “selected names”
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The users tested were a Junior course 10 female, a Senior course 6 male, and a Graduate course 15 male. Because the PennyPincher target audience consists of college students or those who have recently graduated -(people for whom even a couple of dollars is pretty important-this ) this sampling adequately represents the user population quite well. The users were all briefed with the briefing shown and the tasks performed are also listed in the Scenario Tasts section. A demo was not performed as we did not think it necessary with the minimalist. Further, we wanted to see the learnability of our application.
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Specific Results
User 1:
Task 1 and 2: easy, no problems
Task 3: said “hmm.. this looks like it might add something..”; at first added $ sign to the total amount input field, corrected after received an error prompt on submit; “what does “include me in transaction mean?”
Task 4 and 5: easy
Task 6: confused about the organization by dates
Task 7 and 8: easy
User 2:
Task 1 and 2: No problems
Task 3: toggles the include me button a few times, “I don’t know what this means”; initially doesn’t add description until prompted by error on submit--wants to have it made obvious that it is required (or not make it required)
Task 4: easy after getting accustomed to it from task 3
Tasks 5-8: easy
User 3:
Task 1 and 2: easy
Task 3: confused about “include me” button and selected it; upon entering second transaction page, he understood and corrected the selection by inputting custom split
Task 4-8: easyReflection
Reflection
The development of the PennyPincher application was a long-term, iterative process. Throughout the course of this semester, we discovered the incredible value that lies in user feedback. Every single one of us has gotten many requests for "user testing" before, but none of us really understood how necessary these tests are in developing a great user interface. If we could do it all over again, we would definitely take more time in paper prototyping the single user summary page as well as the overall summary page. The reason for this is after implementing our computer prototype, we realized there were still some grey areas in the design in which we have no agreed on or solidified. Since paper prototyping is much easier than computer prototyping, we would definitely take more time in considering all of the views that the user will use equally, instead of focusing most of our attention on views where there will be a lot of user input. Along with more detailed paper prototyping for each view, we would definitely reconsider the way we tested each tester. Our biggest mistake the first time around was not asking enough questions to the testers and assuming that if the tester doesn't say anything, that the feature/design was "good." Next time around, if we have any doubt about a particular design decision, we will make it a point to ask the user about it, even if the user passed a particular task using that exact feature/design. The lesson learned here is that is best to write and develop a product that will be usable for most people, focusing on usability risks that are likely to arise.
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