...
Finally, because we switched from login-driven site to URL-driven site, we had to support auto-mailing lost/new URL links to users. While we prominently display the links on the same page as the card signing page, if the user forgets or chooses not to save the URL links, they won’t have another way to remember the links since we didn’t have enough time to hook up a mailing server that can auto-mail the links to users for future reference. This can be done as a future extensions of the project given more time.
Evaluation
User #1:
An EE professor at MIT with a daughter named Nancy, who wants to make a birthday card and share it with family members in China. Since Nancy was only 4 yrs old, User 1 had to use her own email address in the form for Nancy and hers again for her own creator form. We should make the recipient email field optional and auto-populate it with the creator’s email if left blank. All the steps to card creation was super intuitive and proceeded smoothly.
User 1, from an older generation, had lots of trouble figuring out the invite-link. She clicked on the invite link and proceeded to type in her husband’s information, name/email, thinking the invitation will be sent to her husband automatically through the website. She also had trouble distinguishing the Invite link from the Administration link. Finding the link took a 2 second delay as she scrolled carefully down the edit page. She finished all other tasks perfectly: receiving invitation and sending the final card after figuring out where the links are.
Proposed solution:
We should probably put the links on top for easy access, add visual redundancies to reinforce the link’s meaning. Using the flower icon for the administrative link, the two people icon for the invite link and the envelope icon for the send card link. As an added measure, we should add those icons to each of the forms to clearly indicate which “step” the user is on currently. This way, the links won’t become that much of a mystery. If that still doesn’t work, we can always put in screen shots of copying the link and sending via email to other people signing the card so the user can visual learn how to accomplish each of the 3 tasks.
User #2:
Taylor, an international college student from Sri Lanka, is hoping to get a card for her dad, who often travels a lot due to his business. Because her family is often not together in one place, with her mom working in her home country and her sister off to college, she wants to find a way for everyone to be able to sign a card and write his or her own personalized message. Taylor was very excited to see something like Eloha, simple and easy to set up a card to send to her family and and finally to her father.
Taylor had a fairly simple experience in creating the card. She mentioned how simple the forms were to fill out, and how easy it was to update and change her message for the card. She didn’t have too much trouble distinguishing between the invite link and admin link. From just reading the line description she figured out that the invite link was the link she would have to send to her sister and mother and from there they would be able to sign the card. Taylor was especially impressed with the tag cloud display of messages. She found it unconventional to normal paper cards, in that one would be able to click on the name of a person and then the message would fly in to the top of the page with the birthday greeting.
Possible Improvement:
There was one suggestion Taylor made that would improve user experience. She would like to have a button next to the invite link so that instead of copying and pasting the link into an email composer, she could just click on the button, which would open a text box where she could enter emails of the people she would like to send the card to. The message would automatically include the link to the card as well. She said this would not only be convenient, but also error proof because sometimes the link might be too long and she may have copied just short of the actual link.
User #3
Yue’s birthday is coming up and Steven just bought a card for everyone to sign. Both are college students on campus during the summer. Not everyone is going to be around to sign the card since it’s during the summer. Steven decides to use Eloha to create a birthday card for Yue to compile messages from friends at internships..
Found the calendar widget for the birthdate selection somewhat surprising, but a pleasant surprise. However, it was unclear whether the birthdate given is the actual birthdate of the recipient or the date of the birthday celebration. When signing the message, Steven, was unsure whether or not he should sign his name in the message. But he ended up not since he remembered that the service asked for his name earlier. The tags were confusing as he was expecting his message to be intact. Additionally, he was clicking on them but didn’t know what they did (and he never dragged them either) since they had a pointer cursor on them. Once he clicked on his name, he realized that they would create his message. He wanted to click his name again to undo the message building. Also, since the messages appear at the top of the ring of contributors, he assumed it belonged to the user at the very top, not the user who was highlighted.
Improvements:
Remove the link affordances on the tags and possible remove the ability to drag them since no one uses that feature. This includes removing the underlining and the pointer cursor that appears on the tags. Also, users may not be expecting tags as the representation of their messages, so it may help to make it explicit that their message is in tag form. The affordances for which user is currently selected should be made more obvious such as adding drop shadow or changing the hue of a selected message to something more different than blue to green. Additionally, we should move the generated message elsewhere so that it isn’t associated with the topmost user in the ring. We should also implement word wrapping for longer messages as well as a cap on how big tags can become. We should also allow users to click on the user whose message is being displayed to return the tag cloud to normalstuff...
Reflection
Overall, we found users much less excited and/or responsive towards our idea than we were. To our surprise, very simple and mundane tasks like filling out a form proved so difficult for the average user if we didn't go out of our ways to make the process easier.
...