Design
Main Page
One major decision we made was to keep the corkboard metaphor. Though we received mixed reviews about it, we decided to keep it after our heuristic evaluations mentioned it as a good design decision. While testing with other class members, we found that the primary issue with the corkboard background was that it made the background too noisy. We found the response to this choice to be much more positive after desaturating the background and reducing contrast.
To-Do List
One major decision here was how to set due dates. In initial user interviews, we found that users rarely thought about tasks more than a few days in advance. Based on this, we decided to forego a date picker in favor of a drop down menu, simplifying the interface and making it more efficient at the cost of not allowing people to set tasks more than a week in advance. We also color coded tasks based on their completion status so users can see task status at a glance.
Edit Mode
Our heuristic evaluators all wanted ways to delete and edit tasks, and complained about the lack of safety in task creation. We decided to forego an undo button in favor of an edit mode that would allow users to easily correct mistakes, as well as make changes to tasks that have been on the list for a while. Clicking a button puts the list into edit mode, where users can edit or delete any tasks in the list.
Manage Family Page
Though we do not expect family members to change often in a typical use case, We included a family management page to add new members and remove members that have left. An edit button was included to allow family members to change their name (or picture in a future implementation) without removing their history of tasks. We decided to use a confirmation dialog to get confirmation before deleting a family member. The efficiency decrease is negligible since this is an uncommon operation in the typical use case, and the extra safety is important because the operation irreversibly deletes that family member's task history.
Family Member History
This page is a list of tasks a given family member has done or is doing. In a future implementation, we would like to have options to view longer histories as well as improving the look of the page. This was designed to be simple, to allow a user to see what a certain family member has been doing "at a glance", and perhaps see if anyone has been slacking off.
Implementation
Evaluation
Our user testing was very similar to our paper prototype, but with a few tweaks in workflow. Tasks became much simpler due to the fact that our actual UI was much cleaner than paper implementation, and our workflow improved (we think). We provided a briefing introducing ourselves, our problem, and the basic idea behind our solution. We also made sure to make the users feel as comfortable as possible before we began. Users were parents/children living at home.
Usability Problems
Task 1a: create an account, upload your image
1. Email / Password input fields on the login screen ignored when register button
pressed
⁃ Major
⁃ Information should be transferred to the new account page
2. "Your name" field ambiguous - user inputted full name
⁃ Minor
⁃ Automatically strip last name if it's entered twice
3. User did not add picture to profile
⁃ Minor
⁃ Require profile picture upload
⁃ Use jpegcam https://code.google.com/p/jpegcam/
Task 1b: Create your family members
1. No clear way to do this from the To-Do list screen.
⁃ Major
⁃ No indicators that family name is a pulldown menu
⁃ Consider making "Edit Family" explicit visible option
2. After creating, new user tab does not appear in the navigation
⁃ Major
⁃ Make the interface update
Task 1c: edit one family name
1. The Edit / Delete Buttons do nothing
⁃ Critical
⁃ Fix them
Task 2a. Create a "wash the bathroom" task that needs to get done ASAP
1. User clicks on her own profile to create a task, gets stuck there, navigation
fails to function
⁃ Critical
⁃ Examine logs to determine what went wrong here.
2. Profile page heading text does not properly format spaces
⁃ Minor
⁃ Fix space output
Task 3a: Claim "make dinner task"
1. In task-claim menu, user icons don't visually differentiate with default
picture.
⁃ Major
⁃ Default picture should change
⁃ Require users to upload picture
Task 4. Check on the tasks you created1. Clicking on completed tasks makes the completion popup show up
⁃ Major
⁃ Completion popup shouldn't show
⁃ informational popup should show
2. Clicking on task user image shows the completion popup
⁃ Major
⁃ Don't show the completion popup
⁃ Show the profile
Followup Questions:
• Is this useful?
⁃ Yes
• What did you find most confusing?
⁃ Using the Mac touchpad interface, I'm used to a PC
• What did you like?
⁃ I like the cork board and title "Cork Together"
⁃ Question mark mystery guy is creepy
• Wish this could do?
⁃ Show if there was a problem completing the task
⁃ Multiple lists - one for special event, one for weekly maintenance
tasks
⁃ Notification of new tasks on mobile platform
Task 1a: create an account, upload your image
-Users tried to enter their full name when we asked for "Family Name". They often realized their mistake as they proceeded.
Severity: Minor
Possible improvement: Change the order in which questions are asked
-Users were confused by photo upload. User did not add picture to profile, and one became so confused they decided to go to facebook to grab a picture before proceeding.
Severity:Minor
Possible improvement: Use jpegcam https://code.google.com/p/jpegcam/\\
Task 1b: Create your family members
-No clear way to do this from the To-Do list screen. Parents had a hard time finding the pulldown menu, whereas kids found it easily.
Major
Possible improvement: adding more contrast, improving the menu wording and making it more obvious that clicking it will make something happen.
-After creating, new user tab does not appear in the navigation
Major
Possible improvement: Providing feedback is important. Not a huge design decision required. Implementing the auto update should improve user experience.
Task 1c: edit one family name
-There is a bug if there exists a space character in a user's name, where edit/delete will not function
Critical
Possible improvement: Fix this
Task 2a. Create a "wash the bathroom" task that needs to get done ASAP
-Users found it incredibly simple to create tasks, and very responsive.
Task 3a: Claim "make dinner task"
-In task-claim menu, user icons don't visually differentiate with default picture.
Major
Possible implementation: Provide different feedback other than just an image. Could possible include names on top of each image. OR: Require users to upload picture. (This would actually make the user creation process harder, though improving photo upload could improve the whole site experience).
Task 3b: Complete "make dinner task"
-User tried to click "finish" and was visibly surprised when the popup showed up. (Later, users explained they did not expect the popup to appear)
Major
Possible improvement: allow "finish" to be a 1 click action, where the claimed user will be marked as completed. Would have to add some safety feature here.
Task 4. Check on what family members have done this week
-Users tried clicking on finished tasks, which resulted in a popup appearing.
Minor
Possible improvement: This is a learnability problem and could be ignored. However, linking to the user profile that created task might be better.
-Users clicked on the user tabs, which they found very easy to understand.