Design concept - Writing Battle

Our design concept was to inspire and motivate writers by having them "battle" against another opponent.  Users could choose a topic of their interest and were given a writing prompt based on that topic.  They were also put under a time constraint to help them stay focused.  Having an opponent would also inspire the writers by allowing them to see what ideas someone else could come up with when given the same prompt.  After writing period ends, other users have the opportunity to read the two pieces of writing from the battles and vote on which piece they preferred.  

For writers who feel pressured by a competitive setting, we also offer a freestyle writing mode, which allows writers to choose a prompt and have a timer but not compete with an opponent.  

Users with a registered account can also visit their profile page to see a history of their writings.  

Prototype photos

Briefing

You are Mob Riller, a Harvard graduate. You have written a few books but none of them are published. Dejected and out of ideas, you decide to visit write('now') for inspiration and motivation for your next book.

Scenario Tasks

• Task 1: Compete in a Writing Battle.
• Task 2: Vote on other user's writings.
• Task 3: Perform a freestyle writing task. Go to your profile to see your previous writings.

Observations

Usability Observations Summary

• All users completed the tasks easily with little guidance.
• Some users were unsure at the beginning but learnt quickly and were able to navigate fluidly by the third task.
• Some major learnability and usability issue include:
  • First time users unsure what writing battle entails
  • Change the topic to write on
  • 'Unvote' a piece on the voting page
  • Color highlight around the writings on profile page to indicate vote were not easily understood

User A

A male student.

Task 1

• Unsure what a writing battle is
• Unsure if the opponent is a compute or a human

Task 2

• Unsure what to do if they both seem the same (neither is better). 

Task 3

• Suspected but unsure if green outline meant that people liked a piece of writing.

Overall Thoughts

• Homepage is sparse. Can be confusing as to what to do next.
• Time constraint is constraining, and did not notice that there was a timer/limited time to write.  
• Ability to have a random category, or to choose a different topic.  
• Add more info the front page.

User B

A female student.

Task 1

• Unsure what to do at the front page
• "How do I know if someone is my opponent?"
• "I didn't know I was going to be given a topic"  Attempted to refresh the page to get a different topic
• Not sure if she can close the settings and start bar.

Task 2

• Unsure if she could vote twice for a piece of writing.

Task 3

• Found the page very quickly after learning it from the writing battle task.
• Not sure how to skip a topic.
• Understood the color highlights.

User C

A male teaching assistant.

Task 1

• Tried to go to the navigation bar and hit writing battle, even though he was already on the writing battle page
• Understood the interface very quickly.
• Thought that viewing results was fun.
• Unsure if he was already logged in.
• Thought that auto-saving and register after trying feature was cool.
• Expected view results to bring him to the specific essay results page with comments.

Task 2

• Understood the vote page very quickly.
• Suggested a counter for remaining number of writings.
• Feature to save or favorite liked writings.
• Suggested list view for voting.
• Suggested ability to view writings by topics.

Task 3

• Found the interface very simple, safe, and easy to learn.
• Suggested sorting profile writings by date, subject, votes, etc.

User D

A male student.

Task 1

• Understood category selection and start button very quickly.
• Enjoyed winning the writing battle.

Task 2

• Navigated to the vote page very quickly.
• Found voting to be fast and efficient.
• Quickly understood writing navigation on the vote page.

Task 3

• Navigated to the freestyle and profile page very quickly.
• Expected a grade for the freestyle writing, like the battle writing mode.

User E

A male student.

Task 1

• Unsure how to refresh the battle.
• Understood the category selection and start bar.

Task 2

• Found no way to unvote, aka not vote for anything.

Task 3

• Unsure what the color headers meant.
• Unsure how to edit the profile information.

User F

A female student

Task 1

• Confused about whether the opponent was a human or computer
• Suggested that opponent was a vague description, could replace it with the opponent's username
• Finished writing before the timer had finished counting down, wanted a way to "finish" early instead of waiting
• Finished the task fairly easily

Task 2

• Understood how the voting worked
• Saw that there were buttons to navigate to another piece to vote on and clicked on it

Task 3

• Most users clicked on the "View profile button" that came up after the freestyle writing task to navigate to their profile; this user actually found and used the profile button in the top right corner.  
• Wondered whether she could see her opponent's writing when viewing her battle writings.  

Prototype Iteration

Overall, our second prototype had more implemented features, pages, and content. Our changes included:

• Adding a profile and voting page. The first prototype only had writing battle and freestyle page.
• Adding interaction for the category settings and start. We added slips of paper for the dropdown, countdown, and topics, which drove the interaction.
• Added color to the clickable objects on pages. We also added color to highlight writings on the profile page.  This change made it easy for users to find the buttons on the page.  
• Added interaction for the writing battle, including simulated opponent writing.  This made it more clear to users that they were writing live against an opponent. 

Summary of Usability Issues

We received many constructive comments overall, and these are what we felt were the most pressing issues.  

• Need a way to brief first time users to explain what the purpose of the site is and what they can do on the site, such as adding a homepage.  
• Add more ability to give constructive criticism (e.g. comments) and create a less definitive voting system, such that users can unvote or vote on two pieces.  
• Allow more flexibility in choosing writing topics.  
• Make it clearer that the writing is timed, and allow faster writers to finish early instead of waiting for the time to finish. 

Response to Studio Discussion

• One person commented that voters might want to indicate in their vote that they think two pieces of writing are equally good.  This is was a good point that we can include by allowing voters to checkmark the vote boxes under both pieces of writing.  During our prototype sessions, we only allowed voters to vote on one piece, and if they tried to vote on both pieces, their vote would be on the piece clicked last.  
• Another student commented that voters should not be able to see the names of the writers when voting, which is also a very good point that we will keep in mind.  
• Someone mentioned that it would be confusing for a user who visited our site to immediately be placed on the battle page as they would not know what to expect from the site.  She suggested that we add an initial homepage with explanation of the site's purpose, while another student suggested a pop-up dialog for first time users.  We originally intended to make the site as simple as possible and chose to make the writing battle the initial site page in order to direct the user to their most likely goal.  We did notice that some users were confused by not seeing a homepage and think that these are valid ideas.