PosterBoard - GR4 - User Testing
Manasi Vartak, Tristan Naumann, Chidube Ezeozue
Design
Final Design
In our final design, we settled for two main views for the PosterBoard:
- Calendar View where the posters are displayed by week and users can either scroll to a week or select it off a calendar
- Similar Events View where the posters are grouped by similar events
We also implemented a slide-in panel for adding posters and in the similar events view we allowed users click on the tag labels of the poster groups and view all the posters within the group.
When a poster is clicked on (in the calendar or similar events view), the poster is focused and the user is able to scribble on it, change scribbling color, view previous scribbles, continue a previous scribble, like/dislike a poster, add a reminder by swiping an RFID card and delete the poster by swiping a card too.
Motivations
In the course of our design, we made changes driven by comments in our paper prototype and heuristic evaluation. Our user testing also threw some insight on possible future improvements.
Paper Prototype
We changed the label "Clustered view" to "Similar Events View"
We forwent using QR codes for adding an event to a user's calendar settling instead for sending an email reminder to the user on swiping their RFID card.
One of the users could not find the button to select the poster file so we made sure that the button was clearly set apart with a sufficient color contrast
To exit from a focused poster, we allowed the user either click a close 'x' sign or click outside the focused poster.
Heuristic evaluation
Before the heuristic evaluation, we put in some animation that slid in the new week when scrolling weeks but it made posters disappear briefly before showing up the poster of the new week. An evaluator thought the behavior was jarring and we removed it.
An evaluator pointed out that there was no way to remove a poster added in error, for instance, so we implemented this critical authentication-based delete functionality
Some evaluators pointed out that since there were only two views (and hence, two buttons for switching between them), it wasn't obvious which view was selected despite our visual separation of the two. So, we added a border that made the selected view more obvious.
We added visual feedback to the like/dislike buttons so users could know how many likes/dislikes a poster has acquired
In response to an evaluator's point, we used alternating column colors in the calendar view to set the days apart but this was not visually appealing so we discarded the idea.
We contemplated moving the calendar to the bottom alongside the buttons for switching between view modes but the calendar would have made that panel occupy too much vertical screen estate. We also contemplated moving the view-switching buttons to the left with the calendar but the similar view does not need a calendar and such a grouping would have been inconsistent between views. Finally, we considered doing away with the calendar entirely since most users would be looking for events around the current date but we decided not to because it would make event management very inefficient for people who put up events weeks or months in advance and wish to take them down or view them.