User Test Briefing
Going abroad for the summer? Have an internship in a city far from home? Afraid you won't know anyone in a brand new place? Thank goodness there's TravelTech!
TravelTech will cater to the logistics of your traveling needs so you don't have to worry about it. Like your personal assistant, TravelTech will help you locate your schoolmates in a new setting, find a roommate, and set up easy ways of communicating with your new friends.
Right now, TravelTech is undergoing some basic user testing to gauge its usefulness and user-friendliness. We appreciate your participation in this task and ask you to follow all directions and be as honest as possible in your comments and suggestions.
Tasks - First Prototype
1) Input trip details
Instructions: You will be in New York from May 23, 2012 to August 1, 2012. Enter this information into the site.
Expected action: Select a location in New York on the map page (first picture below), then select the given start and end dates on the calendar (second picture below).
2) View results
Instructions: Tell me the name of the person who will be about 30km away from you. Then, add this person to "Group 5". Afterwards, save your trip details.
Expected action: Click on the appropriate line on the graph and read off the relevant user information. Then select "Group 5" from the drop-down list and click the "add" button to add the person to the travel group. Finally, click the "Add Trip" button to save personal trip details.
3) View and Edit Travel Groups
Instructions: Tell me the names of the people in Travel Group 1, and remove one of these people from the group. Then, create a new travel group called "My Group".
Expected action: Click on "Travel Group 1", select a person, click the "Delete person" button then the "close" button. Then, select the "add group" button, type the group name, and hit "submit".
Observations - First Prototype
1) Map page
Many users like the map page and were fairly familiar with the common controls from their interactions with Google Maps. However, some of them were unsure on how to select a location, and even after they had clicked one, they were still confused about what to do next. Some users were interested in having a text-driven search option that would zoom the map appropriately.
2) Calendar page
All of the users were confused by the calendar interface because there was no way of specifying which date was the start date and which one was the end date. It was also unclear to some users that they merely needed to click on the appropriate date to select it. Two final issues with the calendar page were that the users couldn't tell whether a selected date was a start or end date, and the users didn't know how to change a date if one had already been selected. Also, users complained that the days of the week were not listed in the calendar.
3) Results page
Every user was overwhelmed by this interface. The graph was confusing to most of them because it was unlike any graph they had encountered before. While some users seemed to understand the graph after a few moments, the learnability definitely seemed too difficult. They were confused by the fact that lines represented people and suggested perhaps including pictures to enforce the representation. While some users by the end thought it was a simple method to figure out how far away people would be, others couldn't use it even after it was explained to them.
3) Other comments
Users were frustrated by the lack of back buttons on many of the pages. Their absence prevented the user from fixing any mistakes in previous steps of the process without starting over. Another complaint that users had was that some of the buttons/options were not unselectable while the process lacked appropriate user input. This allowed the user to continue and "break" the back-end. A few users were confused on where the "My Info" link on the menu bar would take you, and it wasn't clear that it was related to "My Trips".
Modifications
Map: We added a search box to the map page, so that users could easily select a specific location. Additionally, we changed the arrow button to say "Save and Continue" to make this step more clear to users.
Calendar: We placed two calendars side by side, one to select the start date and one to select the end date, in order to alleviate the confusion that users had.
Results: We completely got rid of the previous graphical representation as all users found it to be too confusing. We replaced it with a more visual interface, allowing the users to see which other users would be near them in a given date range and within a certain radius.
My Info Page:
