Table of Contents
Design
Our design has changed drastically from how we first envisioned it. As we completed different evaluations, a common theme amongst our feedback was the need to simplify the user interface. Because of this, between the various iterations of our design, we spent majority of the time attempting to simplify the interface while still offering the functionality wanted by the user.
Home Page
In our paper prototyping stage, the home page contained separate sections for upcoming meetups and previous meetups, and notifications had to be viewed via a dropdown which was triggered by clicking a button in the navigation bar. After performing user evaluations on the paper prototype, we quickly realized that separate sections made the home page too bloated, and users had trouble recognizing the notification button in the navigation bar. In the computer prototyping stage we tried making the sections smaller and scrollable and adding more affordance to the notifications dropdown, but feedback from heuristic evaluations were still negative. As a result we did away with the sections and added a tab view for viewing notifications, upcoming meetings, and past meetings. Because the meetup notifications need to be handled first upon login, the notifications tab is set as the active tab when the home page is loaded. We also added a header to point out how many pending invitations a user currently has right below the greeting headline, and fixed the sizes of images in each tab to increase internal consistency.
Rating Feature
In the paper prototyping stage users complained about the affordance of the rate buttons, and in the computer prototyping stage users complained about the lack of feedback and safety with clicking the negative or positive buttons. As depicted in the screenshot, we addressed the users concerns by different colorful buttons with better affordance, and using a confirmation dialog when performing negative ratings. We also provide feedback by disabling the buttons once a review is submitted.
Profile Page
The final design of the profile page is shown above. During the paper prototype stage, the design of this page was cluttered with attributes about the dog and comments left by reviewers. We simplified the design by first reducing the amount of attributes that are shown about the dog, and using white space to properly group items. We also made sure to only show positive reviews versus listing every single review that the dog has received. Because we fixed these major problems, feedback from heuristic evaluations did not yield many issues regarding this page. From the computer prototype to the final design, the only major change was making the button more descriptive by making it say "Let's Meetup!" versus just "Meetup".
Schedule Page
The schedule page has undergone many subtle changes that have made it much more learnable and efficient to use. During the paper prototyping stage, we allowed the user to either select time slots in the calendar, or fill out a form that contained fields for the date, time, location, and message. Almost all users agreed that filling out the form was much less efficient than just using the calendar. We addressed this by disabling the time field and adding a placeholder that tells users to select a particular time slot. Users also complained about the location field, unaware of exactly how to use it. We increased learnabilty by adding a placeholder that tells users what to enter, and also added autocomplete to the field to increase efficiency. These changes worked out well, as we received much less negative feedback regarding this page during the computer prototyping stage. Multiple users specifically commended the use of the disabled text field to display the time of the selected block. The only major change change between the computer prototyping stage and the final design is the color of occupied time slots. These were changed from red to grey, since in most cases red is associated with an actionable item.
Remaining Pages
The final design of the search page, the review page, and respond to invitation page are show above. Most of the major changes, such as adding autocomplete to the search page for efficiency or allowing users or listing the schedule in the respond page,were captured early on during paper prototyping. Other then a few cosmetic issues that were fixed after heuristic evaluation, these page have not changed much since the computer prototyping stage.
Implementation
The website has been tested using Google on the Windows 8 and Mac OSX platforms.
Evaluation
Our user testing involved the following tasks:
Task 1 : Respond to the invitation from Lassy
Task 2 : Search for dogs in Beacon Hill and schedule a meetup with Cupcake
Task 3 : Review a previous meetup with Allen
Task 4 : Reschedule the meetup invitation from Tony