GR6 - User Testing
Design
- Describe the final design of your interface. Illustrate with screenshots. Point out important design decisions and discuss the design alternatives that you considered. Particularly, discuss design decisions that were motivated by the three evaluations you did (paper prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and user testing).
BucketList allows users to easily create Buckets, share their Buckets with others, add tasks, write notes, and view and organize all this information on their board. The final design is centered around the bulletin board metaphor, giving the UI a clear and unique focus. The design also prioritizes efficiency and simplicity, as this is what most users requested during initial surveys and user analysis (see GR1 for more detail on user analysis).
In this section we will highlight the different aspects of the interface, and comment on our reasoning for making the choices we did.
Login / Create an Account
Figure 1: Login
The first thing the user sees when opening BucketList is a plain bulletin board with a large piece of paper asking them to log in or create an account. We always planned on having the initial landing page be simple, and there were no problems with it during testing, so this part did not change very much based on user feedback. The final design of the website was extremely focussed on the bulletin board, allowing users to efficiently add Buckets and tasks, post notes to their board / arrange them however they want, and easily see what tasks they need to do, all from one main page.
Main Page - Bulletin Board
Figure 2: Main Screenshot of BucketList
While using BucketListBucketList does not have multiple pages to navigate through, the user remains on the main bulletin board screen at all times, where they can accomplish all key tasks. One important reason we . We chose this design, instead of having multiple pages to navigate and forms to fill out, is because through, as it makes the application very website more efficient and - users can easily and quickly accomplish all key functions from one place. This decision was made based on initial user surveys (see GR1 for more details), since most users
Figure 1: Main Screenshot of BucketList
Login
When
Figure 2: Login
During final user testing, users also commented that this made the application easier to learn, as everything the user needs is always right in front of them.
In our initial paper prototypes, there was a much smaller focus on the bulletin board. In addition, each Bucket had a different board (instead of having one main board with all the user's info). We got lots of feedback regarding the bulletin board (see GR3 for details), and the consensus seemed to be that users liked the bulletin board but didn't like how we were implementing it. We tried two different designs of the bulletin board (splitting the screen with an "all notes" and the bulletin board, and having tabs to go between "all notes" and the board) for the paper prototype, and took all the comments into account when designing the website for GR4. Based on feedback we decided to switch to the 'one main board' approach and we split the screen into 3 sections (side list of buckets, bulletin board on top, and list of notes / tasks on the bottom). After coding this, we did another round of user testing before GR4 was due. Many users commented that they wanted more room for the bulletin board and thought that always displaying the notes / tasks in the bottom and list of buckets on the side was a waste of space. Based on this feedback, we redesigned to look more like the website in the screenshot above.
Drop-down Menus
Figure 2: Drop-down Menu to Sort Tasks
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