QuickPick GR3 Analysis

Brief

You just completed your freshman year at MIT, and declared 6-3 as your major and Psychology as your humanities concentration. It is now time to choose your classes for next semester. In order to ensure that you can take all the electives you want in addition to the courses required for your degree, you decide to map out an academic four-year plan. 

Scenario Tasks

First Iteration Paper Prototype

Usability Test Notes

User 1, Iteration 1

Task 1: 

• Wonders if 7.012 can be offered in the spring, we blank out the ineligible semesters. 
• Spends time looking through her classes, 
• User noted "This is Fun!" 
• "Can I add multiple electives at the same time?" -- currently? No. Consider changing. 
• "Are Prerequisites are strict?" Consider how this affects schedule. 
• Selects a few specific AUS/Labs, but doesn't assign some of them. Likes the flexibility. 
• "Is there an easy way to know that 813 is an AUS/LAB?" -- currently? No. Coming in future iteration. Need a way to indicate multiple requirement fulfillment.

Task 2:

• There is a conflict between two classes.  She would like to keep it; doesn't attend lectures.  That should be allowed; is realistic for how some people pick their classes.
• Uses radio button to put in class recitations.  Would like to see recitations even though they may conflict with a class.
• Wants an indication in the class lists that displays which ones are completed and those that have the recitation still need to be decided.
• Wants a save or done button from the current semester schedule; ensure that it saves as she transitions but yet would like can transition without saving.
• For the conflicts, she would like to see conflicts in the four-year plan view for the current semester.  From there she would like to quickly see the conflict and see if she wants to fix it or not.
• If there is a conflict that she must change, would go to search for a new class, move it to class list, then put in the recitation if necessary.
• Would like to see a modal screen of the four-year plan in order to rearrange that in case of conflict.  And those changes reloaded into the current view and list of classes.

Task 3:

• Knows how to see friends schedule by clicking her name; would like to see the schedule in the four-year plan too.
• Would like to see comments of the classes from friends and only those that are useful.  Would want to see comments up-vote and down-vote to arrange comments.
• Would care more about friend's four-year plan over the current semester.  To know who she can do homework with, does not care so much when they are taking their classes.  Acknowledges that other people may want that information. 

User 2, Iteration 1

Task 1: 

• No questions about briefing or task 1
• Not immediately obvious that classes are draggable, first instinct was to click.
• "This is fun!"
• Easy and straightforward to drag the classes that are explicitly represented in the boxes at top
• Wonders how he will know which classes are only offered in spring/only in fall-->answer: unavailable semesters will be grayed out.
• Because they were a different color, assumed that the blue "AUS" or "Department Lab" tags could not be dragged, only clicked. This happened to work out because clicking is an option, but there is also the option to drag.
• Interacted well with the pop-ups for choosing AUS/Labs/Course 9 electives, etc. 
• First placed all of the classes that were listed explicitly, then moved on to blue tags.
• Placed HASS classes last. 
• "I'm a little bored"
• Reacted positively when we told him that you can, for example, drag the generic "HASS D Category 1" onto the schedule and choose the specific class later.
• Questions: "Now that I've created this schedule, what can I do with it?" "How do I know if I have the prerequisites to take class x in semester y?" <--(we didn't explain it)

Task 2:

• Make sure that things that can be dragged look much different from things that can only be clicked

Task 3:

• Immediately knew to click the friend's name in order to have her schedule overlaid.

Overall Comments:

• I don't imagine myself doing this in one sitting; need a way to save
• I wouldn't want to do the four-year plan and plan the current semester at the same time
• Would be cool if the software generated a schedule (with labs and recitations) for me, and then just allowed me to change if I didn't like certain of the choices made
• Maybe focus on the four-year plan and scrap the scheduling option, the four-year functionality is cooler
• Be careful with how you present restricting options by graying out, be clear about why this option is taken away
• Important to present information on each of the courses (pop-up), double click isn't necessarily the most intuitive

User 3, Iteration 1

Task 1:

• Is not Course 6, does not know pre-requisites or requirements.
• Looks at the list of requirements and starts to drag and drop the courses into his four-year plan.  (Picks based on the course number).  Also tries to balance classes between Course 6 and HASS classes.
• Goes in order by semester (Sophomore Fall, Sophomore Spring, Junior Fall, etc.).
• Puts class in Fall semester although it is not offered; blocking out was not done; an easily evident way has to be shown for actual site.
• "It would be cool to have the class ratings."
• Successfully filled out the four-year plan with generic classes.  Did not know how to put in specific classes.  Had to be explained how to pick specific Lab courses and AUS's.  Not intuitive because some are clickable and others are not.
• Would like to see a sum of the workload (units) per semester.

Task 2:

• Quickly understands to pick a class in the class list and clicks the radio button to pick a recitation.
• Would like to see all the options (Lectures, Labs, and Recitations) even those that may conflict.
• May want to have a next button that would save the current settings and move to the next class down the list.
• Wants to see the classes grayed out after they pick the recitation to show completion.

Task 3:

• Sees that no classes are shared; does not care too much.
• Does not really use friends to help pick classes; finds them distracting during class.

Comments:

• Wants course evaluations to decide courses, generally does not ask friends.
• Would like course evaluations to deciding on balancing of courses between hard courses and easy courses.
• Did not plan a four-year plan; went semester by semester.  Does not see reason to plan four-year plan.
• "It would be kind of nice if it could extract the information from evaluations to see the ratings of the professors and the workload."
• Would like to see the exam schedule throughout the semester.

Second Iteration Paper Prototype 

Changes: 

• Added a counter of the units each semester. 
• Adding data from the course evaluations as to how many hours per week of work each semester to see how heavy of a term has been selected
• Added the ability to schedule conflicts on the semester schedule 
• Added indications of conflicts at the four year plan view for the current term. 
• Added number of finals in term. 
• Added the ability to search classes and save them in the persistant search box.