Page History

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3. Scenario Tasks

1. Record the items in your grocery receipt: Milk ($2.00), Bread ($1.50)
2. Record last night's dinner: Spaghetti and Meatballs (cost = $5.00)
3. Record today's breakfast: Two pieces of bread with peanut butter, one cup of milk
4. Look at only the dinners and breakfasts that you've eaten in the past month.
5. Look at how many Calories of vegetables you've eaten for dinner in the past month.

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Iteration 1

Conclusions

• Home page is a bit overwhelming.
  • Trying to convey It conveys too much information. We tried to optimize for experienced users, but new users had a lot of trouble learning it.
• We may have given the users too much flexibility.
  • When given a choice, they're sometimes confused about how to make their decision.
  • (Are “Spaghetti and Meatballs” one or two items? How do I enter the cost if I split them? How do I enter food groups if I don't? Etc.)
  • Also, the login screen is another example of this; users didn't know what all the pages were and weren't sure if they should jump to a specific page or not.
• The labels on the meal log page were not very clear.
• The analytics page needs work.
  • 3 Three graphs side-by-side are very confusing to a user.
  • It was unclear what the possible options were actually changingfor the graphs.
  • It was unclear what The titles for the graphs were also unclearshowing. They needed more visible titles.

User 1

• Upon being brought to the home page, the user was initially overwhelmed and confused.
• (He mentioned aloud that he wasn't sure which page to go to)
• After staring at the page for a bit, he regained his bearings
• When he actually attempted to use the Food List, he was able to use it quickly and efficiently
• He figured out how to use the meal log from the main menu without any problems
• At this point, he still found the home page confusing
• When attempting to enter a meal:
  • He said “interesting” aloud and explained that he thought Spaghetti and Meatballs were two separate things, but didn't know how to enter the cost because he only has the cost for the meal in total.
  • He put the total cost under the first item (“spaghetti”), and put “ – ” under the cost for “meatballs”
• When the confirmation came up, he said “This thing is still here... What do I do about it?”
• He said “I feel dumb” for not knowing what the food groups were for a particular item (wondering if there were multiple or not)
  • (This was said light-heartedly in jest)
• He went to the meal log to view the meal history, but when he had to enter another meal, he initially thought he had to go back to the home page to enter a meal
  • Then, when he found the “Add Meal” button on that page, he wondered why he could do it in two places
• He was able to enter this meal very quickly
• When he got to the analytics page, he found the “titles” underneath the graphs were confusing
• It took him a long time in the drop-down menu to find the “calories-vegetable” option
  • He wondered aloud why there were 3 graphs
  • After trying them out, he said aloud “I guess it would be for comparing and contrasting”
• He mentioned that the graphs could use “better headings” at the top

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Iteration 2

Conclusions

• We need to figure out how to re-collapse the food Groceries list and the meal entry thing from the home page
  • Also need to figure out how to unselect a template after one has been selected
    • (Make a “None” Possible solution: make “None” an option and have it be the default?).
  • This home page was much more intuitive for users than the previous one, however.
• When entering a meal, the form needs to display the "serving size" for items that are selected from the Groceries list--otherwise this metric is entered, but unused.
• We still need to figure out how to make the labels for the meal log more obvious; . This might be easier with the actual visible representation because it is mimicking gCalGoogle Calendar.
• We need to decide when (time-wise) to display different meals on the single-day view of the Google Calendar. Do we tell users to enter the time of their meals? This is probably not important to them, and therefore too much to ask. We may have to change the single-day view to a different sort of layout.
• We need to make the optional fields more obviously optional
• A “Today” button would be very helpful for all of the date fields
• Look for an online database with nutrition info; maybe we can easily auto-complete nutrition info. Otherwise, probably not worth it

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• On the food item entry screen, “There are a lot of boxes to push”
• After finishing entering the item, “How do I get out?”
• Commented that a “today” button would be very useful for date fields on the meal log (and elsewhere)
• Typed in the text “Don't know” for the cost of peanut butter
  • Guessed something for all of the other fields he didn't know
• saved Saved his breakfast as a template
• When asked to view the meals he's eaten recently, he said “Not sure whether to go to 'View Meals' or 'Analytics'.”
  • After going to “View Meals”, he said “That makes sense now”
• He understood the labels/filters on the calendar for the meal log
• He had trouble finding the analytics tab at the top of the meal log from this page
• He suggested that we have greater parallels between pages. As it is, the user needs to learn a new interface for every tab (on the navigation bar)
• He commented that data entry was less straightforward than the rest of the site
• He mentioned that the fact that some fields weren't required wasn't obvious (he thought all fields were required)

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• She didn't have any trouble with the meal log
• Wondered aloud “How do I close the grocery list?”
• Also, “What is the template?” and clicked on the hyperlink
• This user found the analytics page intuitive and was quickly able to get to everything
• She was a little confused by the graph that displayed information by food group
• Asked about aggregate statistics: averages over time

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5. Prototype Iteration

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In the same vein, the analytics page was also intended to optimize efficiency by automatically displaying three graphs side-by-side in anticipation of expert users' desire to simultaneously look at and compare multiple graphs. However, the tests showed that users found this to be overwhelming especially given that most beginner users only want to see one graph at a time and do not want to compare multiple graphs yet. They also found the three graphs to be confusing since none of the graphs were labeled to indicate what the various buttons and menus were changing. Thus, we redesigned the page so that it would initially load only one graph, which the user could modify. To accommodate the expert users, we added a button that would allow them to display additional graphs next to the initial one. In this design, all options and graphs are clearly labeled.

In addition to these bigger changes, we made finer-grain changes to the Food List and Meal Log forms. First, we added details of "serving size" and "calories per serving" for each item in the Food List. Correspondingly, we added "servings" as a detail for each item in a new Meal Log entry. We hoped these changes would make it easier to judge caloric intake. Second, we added select boxes to the Meal Log entry form that displayed the items on the Food List. This made it more visible that users could use items from their Food List to populate their Meal Log. Finally, we renamed some of our pages, favoring verb phrases rather than nouns, which had confused some users. "Meal Log" was replaced with "Add Meal." "Food List" was replaced with "Add/Edit Groceries."