Table of Contents
Briefing
Thank you for volunteering to test our prototype for 6.813/6.831 User Interface Design. Our website is a tool designed for parents of school-aged children to coordinate carpooling for school and after-school activities. Our goal is to create an easy-to-use interface that makes it easy to set up carpools, helps users keep track of commitments, allows for scheduling flexibility, and ensures the safety of the children.
Scenario and Tasks
We have created three roles in which you will play the parts of the various parents participating in the carpool.
First Role
Your name is Jane, you have a son, Bob, who has signed up for Underwater Basket Weaving, and you want to carpool with other parents. You live at 1234 Fake St., Bakersfield, CA 93203. You also need to keep in mind that your family is going on vacation from 4/22 to 4/29.
- Task 1: Visit getyourride.com to find and join a carpool for your son’s activity. After joining a carpool, find the group under the pending groups.
You have a feeling your turn to drive is coming up, but you aren’t quite sure when.
- Task 2: Get the next date/map for your next drive and confirm your availability. Out of curiosity, you also take a look at your schedule for the month.
A few weeks later, you have an unexpected death in your family on 3/26, but it is your turn to drive. You will need to reschedule.
- Task 3: Swap one of your dates for a new one.
Second Role
Your name is Vladimir, one of the other parents in Jane’s basket-weaving carpool. Jane has proposed to swap dates with you, and you need to accept her proposal to complete the swap.
- Task 4: Agree to swap dates with Jane.
Third Role
Your name is Alyssa, another one of the other parents in Jane’s basket-weaving carpool. It is your turn to pick up the kids, but the other parents want to know that their kids are safe. Luckily, we have a mechanism for letting them keep track of where you are on the pickup route.
- Task 5: Use the mobile app to allow the other parents track of your drive.
First Iteration
Prototype Photos
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Observations from User Tests
To protect anonymity, we will refer to our three testers for this round as User A, User B, and User C.
User A
Task 1
- He entered, “Underwater basket weaving, Bakersfield, CA” and tabbed and pressed submit. He mentioned he would expect the cursor to be in the text field by default.
- He clicked on the first class.
- He clicked the button to enter his address.
- He liked seeing that Alyssa and Vladimir are nearby. He felt that motivated him to go further. He asked how far the class is from his home. We should display that.
- He then clicked the button to add himself to the carpool but was confused because he wants to know more about the people in the carpool first. He wanted to click on their names and see a profile. This is a safety issue; we’re not providing the right info prior to setting up a carpool.
Task 2
- User correctly selected the next tab date and clicked “confirm”. Afterwards, user was able to quickly identify the view next schedule option.
- User remarks that he does not know how to make page options go away after completing the task.
Task 3
- User selected “swap times” from the view next date tab. Leading the user into the “my carpool section” already loaded with basket weaving information. User selected the swap arrow on the date he wanted to remove and selected another data (arrow) to complete the task. (User did not select cancel date)
Task 4
- User selected “my carpools” tab immediately.
- Following tabbed page load, the user selected “basket weaving”.
- The user remarks that he would “tab out to view his calendar and tab back to confirm the swap date”.
- User remarks that clicking the final “okay” would make the my carpools schedule re-update with the revised dates.
Task 5
- User remarks that “track ride” is a little confusing because he wants to track his ride, not track another parent’s. However, user was able to quickly run through all tasks.
User B
Task 1
- He entered, “Underwater basket weaving, Bakersfield, CA”. He felt the field was too generic and would have preferred to see a “location” field in addition to a description field.
- He clicked on the first class.
- He strongly resisted going further because he doesn’t want to carpool with people he doesn’t know, for the safety of his children.
- He clicked the button to enter his address.
- Upon seeing that Alyssa and Vladimir are close to him, he wondered whether they are close to him in the direction of the class or another direction. He suggested putting a map on the page.
- He tried to select Alyssa and Vladimir, but didn’t understand why there were no checkboxes and didn’t see the button to add himself to the carpool.
- Upon seeing that button, he clicked it, signed up, checked the boxes for Alyssa and Vladimir and proceeded.
Task 2
- User promptly selected next date.
- Once selecting next tab, the user re-read his task description. User seemed a little confused after selecting confirm. The facilitator told the user that there currently is not any feedback at this time.
- User was able to print route directions and get his schedule for the month instinctively.
- Afterwards, user remarked that he was initially tempted to select the “my carpools” tab.
Task 3
- User recalls seeing something about swapping in “next date” and selects the “next date” tab.
- Once there, he selects “swap” to get to the my carpools tab.
- User selects the date he wants to swap and the new date to swap with. The user was confused with the language “you” or the option to swap with yourself.
- User remarks that the swapping is very tricky and needed facilitator guidance to complete the task.
Task 4
- The user selected “my carpools” and remarks that the notification was catching his attention.
- The user selects “I accept” quickly after viewing the pop up.
- The user initially “cancelled” because he wasn’t sure which dates were his. After correspondence with the facilitator he was able to understand the date selection.
- The user was confused because in task 3 he only selected 1 date to swap, not two.
Task 5
- The user quickly selected “basket weaving” and then “track ride”.
- The user remarked a confusion with the vocabulary “track ride” since he would do that to track someone else’s ride, not his own ride.
User C
Task 1
Task 2
- Confusion between selecting next date or my carpools tab
- Viewed full schedule
- Confirmed Date
Task 3
- Navigated to my carpools tab
- Forgot which date was next, so he navigated back to his next date tab to view the date
Selected the swap date button to initiate the swap
- Initially selected only one date, received error message and then immediately selected another date to swap with
Task 4
- Noticed the notification and navigated to the “my carpools” tab
- Noticed the notification and navigated to the Underwater... tab
- made sure he was not conflicted on either of those days
- The displayed notification of when the date is swapped is slightly confusing, there should be a more clear delivery of swapping to and from
Task 5
Summary of Usability Problems
Learnability
Safety
Efficiency
Second Iteration
Changes to Prototype
- Some users wished that the date were displayed somewhere on the interface. We chose to add a date display after "Welcome,_______."
- Because some users mistakenly looked around in "My Carpools" before noticing the "Next Date" tab, we decided to highlight the tab to make it more obvious.
- It was noted that the calendar would be more useful if it weren't limited to a single month. We added the option for the user to browse between months.
- Some users were frustrated with the lack of undo options on both the calendar loading and date swapping interfaces. We added the option to toggle the calendar between expanded and contracted states. We changed the date swapping interface from a pop-up screen to its own tab, so that users would be able to navigate away and return at will.
- Some non-native English speaking testers were confused by the wording on the "My Carpools" tab. We had referred to the user as "You" when assigning pickup dates on the schedule, which could be misconstrued as a person's name in some languages. In this new prototype, we decided to simply refer to the user by their name instead.
- Users had trouble figuring out how to swap dates. We decided to add a separate tab specifically devoted to date swaps so that the function could be more easily accessed.
- Originally, we didn't want to include instructions because, as discussed in class, a good user interface does not require much explanation. However, swapping dates is not a regular function, and all of our testers had trouble with that task. We decided to include more descriptive instructions for the swapping interface, sacrificing efficiency for the sake of learnability.
- Users wanted to be able to view their schedules before agreeing to a swap, so we included an option to allow them to view their full carpooling schedules on the same page, improving efficiency through anticipation.
- Because all three users complained about the wording for the ride tracking interface on the mobile app, we changed "Track Ride" and "Untrack Ride" to "Enable Ride Tracking" and "Disable Ride Tracking," respectively, to make the button labels more intuitive and improve learnability.
Prototype Photos
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Observations from User Tests
User D
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 5
User E
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 5
User F
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 5
Summary of Usability Problems
Learnability
Safety
Efficiency