Prototype Photos
These photographs were all taken of our first iteration of our prototype, which currently has 3 screens to step the user through the process of finding schools, selecting which ones to visit, and planning a trip.
Search
This screen would be the welcome screen for our web page, where a user can quickly enter information relevant to their college search and then proceed to begin searching. The GPA, SAT, Similar Schools, and Region fields are all text-boxes that can be filled in by the user that will be used to narrow down the school search. In the top corner there would be an option to log in, which would allow the user to access saved trips and schools that they might be interested in visiting so that they can plan multiple trips and save the results.
Select
The selection screen is divided into 3 panels and allows the user to begin picking which schools to visit based on the search criteria entered on the previous screen. The center panel is the focal point, presenting the user with an interactive map that they can use to navigate around and see available schools. At the highest level (i.e. if no region is specified) a map of the U.S. would be shown with dots over each region that have the number of possible match schools in that region. As the user zooms in on the map (either by clicking on the map or using the zoom bar), more views will be shown and the labels will split and show more and more specific divisions of where schools are located. At the final zoom level (presented in this photograph) the specific schools in an area will be shown with pins in the map. These schools will then populate the left hand panel labeled "Results," and the user can add the schools to the "Selections" panel (either by clicking on them in results or by clicking on them on the map and adding them that way). Then the user can specify the dates of their visit and be taken to the planning screen.
Plan
The final screen plans the visit itinerary. Keeping with the 3 panel scheme, the left hand panel is populated with the list of schools selected by the user to visit. The user can then select schools from this panel and the middle panel will show tour and information session times for that school that the user can add to their schedule (the right panel). The schedule panel is dynamic and the user can rearrange the order in which they plan to visit schools and on which day they plan to go to which school. Each school will be attached to the selected events (tour, info session, or custom events that the user would like to enter, such as a visit with a coach or department tour). The user can go through the process of selecting times for each school that they plan to visit and then rearrange the schedule accordingly.
Briefing
We had the following notes for briefing participants:
Purpose:
- Parents often plan trips for their high school age children to visit colleges, but there are a lot of challenges along the way that we are trying to alleviate.
- Find good fit colleges in a certain geographic area
- Balance multiple campus tours/info session times in one easy place
Tasks:
- A few tasks as if you were a college junior planning visits to schools
Disclaimers:
- We’re not testing you, we’re testing the interface, feel free to ask questions, but also try to explore and see what happens
Conclusion:
- Do you have any questions? If I can’t answer them now because it will interfere with the test I will definitely answer all unanswered questions at the end.
Scenario Tasks
These are the three tasks that users were given when interacting with our interface, the first roughly corresponds to the first and part of the second screen (mainly focused on searching), the second task targets the second screen (selection) and the third the third screen (planning the itinerary).
Task 1
Imagine you are a high school junior with a 3.6 GPA and 2050 SATs. Find schools in Northern California that might be a good fit.
Task 2
Select 4 schools that you would like to visit on spring break (March 23-30th).
Task 3
Plan an itinerary for visiting the 4 schools selected in Task 2.
Observations
Task 1 (Search)
Most of the users were able to go through the first screen very quickly and with no confusion, entering the information and clicking the "Go" button to move on to the next task. However, some users made a couple of comments and there were a few key observations from this stage:
- For efficiency purposes, some users hoped that there would be autocomplete entries in the text fields on the search screen
- There was some confusion and learnability issues with the "Region" text field because users did not know how specific to be or what regions would be accepted in their search (one user suggested the "Region" being a menu of some kind so that users do not have to guess at whta the system wants)
- Some confusion about which fields were optional or whether every field was required.