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Play around and see what happens.
Observations
Round 1
We observed a few problems during the first round of user testing. A few users had trouble figuring out that the “exit” button in the top right corner closed the update dialog instead of the “Update Project” button. Otherwise, updating projects generally did not pose a problem. Some users had trouble understanding the graphic representing budget allocations over the year in budget view; for example, they couldn’t tell how much was allocated vs. how much was unallocated. The building status view, which showed all of the active projects by floor, also confused some of our users because they couldn’t understand how to manage multiple-floor projects, though they liked being able to have an overview of active projects. There was also an issue in the “Create New Project” dialog, where some users weren’t sure whether they should enter in a floor or not. In that same dialog, they entered dollar amounts in different ways: some included the dollar sign while others didn’t. On the plus side, no one had any trouble figuring out how to review or take action on student requests.
Round 2
During the second round of user testing, users had much less problems navigating their tasks. The building status page was still a bit confusing because of the layout of projects, but once we fixed that, it was very effective. One major point of confusion was that the “View” button on the “View Project” dialog brought up the budget graphic, and that was unexpected. So a more descriptive button descriptive was necessary.
Prototype Iteration
Based on user feedback during Round 1, we changed the “Recent Expenditures” section from a static pane that would require going to another page to view the desired information to a scroll pane. We also changed how we handled a special case for multiple floor projects, in which a project might be on floors 2 & 4 but not three, for example, by drawing lines connecting project bubbles on different floors. We changed the update dialog so that it closed when the “Update Project” button was clicked, and changed the “Create New Project“ dialog so that if no floor is entered, then a project will apply to the entire building.