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We found our user interface to be rather usable and think that the implementation framework we selected allowed us to build a product with few usability bugs.h5.
Evaluation
Scenario Task #1
- Find all rides to the airport.
- Search for a ride to Logan Airport from MIT on May 17th at 6AM.
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Observations | Notes |
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The user tried to find a ride by filling in the "Post a Ride" form. He realized that he had made a mistake after he pressed the "Post Ride" button and saw the result of the action. | This may be prevented by making the "Find a Ride" and "Post a Ride" labels more prominent (using more noticeable colors, etc). |
The user manipulated the "Find a Ride" form. He couldn't find the ride he wanted because it didn't exist, but he kept narrowing the filter a few more times before realizing that the ride really didn't exist. | A label specifying the number of rides matching the filter (e.g. "_One _ride found on May 17, 2011") may have prevented this. |
When the user posted a new ride, he didn't use the autocomplete feature when he filled in the "From" field, but he did when he filled in the "To" field. | The autocomplete feature is learnable. |
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using another framework like Ruby on Rails or Python/Django might have yielded cleaner, less repetitive code.
The back end was a MySQL database hosted by scripts.mit.edu. Since there were two major entities that we needed to model and store persistently, our database had a user information table as well as a ride information table. We did not need any relation tables since every ride was associated with exactly one user who posted the ride.
Evaluation
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Reflection
The iterative design process allowed our team to really focus on one stage of development at a time when building our interface.