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We used a Python flask backend with a sqlite server to power SETENTS. The way we structured our database allowed for notes having the same title, but did not allow folders to share a title: internal consistency suffers some as a result.
Evaluation
Since our target population is college students, test users were recruited from among our friends (who had not yet seen the project). Our users were briefed using the same briefing we used for the paper prototype of our design, which follows:
"You’re a student at MIT, and you were annoyed with taking notes on paper, so you’re trying out an application called SETENTS.
SETENTS primarily advertises the ability to record video with your webcam that’s synced up with the notes as you type them. It also should let you take snapshots from the video to insert into your notes.
As a good student, it’s very important that you take good notes - including all diagrams that the professor draws on the board - and then take time to review those notes later (before the test)."
Our tasks were modified somewhat from our paper prototype tasks. The test users were asked to perform the following tasks:
1. "Create new notes for your 6.813 lecture, "Animation." Take notes on the lecture and make sure you have video to review later.
2. There's an interesting figure on the lecture slides. Insert it into your notes and make sure the figure itself is prominent.
3. The lecture is over. Make sure your notes are organized so you can find them later.
4. Review 6.813 Lecture 19 for the test. Make sure your original notes didn't miss anything about the topic of "Message Files."
We did not present our users with a demo.
User 1
Our first test user is a senior, majoring in course 16.
Task 1: The user create a new note in the 6.813 folder and titled it "Animation." He did not immediately start recording video: first he tried pressing the disabled play button. He clicked the enlarge video button, and began to take notes.
Task 2: The user took a snapshot and cropped it. He had trouble locating the cursor after inserting the image but before cropping it, since the enlarged video screen made the text area smaller than the width of the inserted image.
Task 3: Since the user had created his notes while already in the 6.813 folder, he did not feel any additional organization was necessary. He expressed annoyance that clicking on the "Home" button in the editing interface took him back to the root of the file browser instead of the 6.813 folder.
Task 4: The user went back into the 6.813 folder and opened Lecture 19. He played the video, and after watching for a few seconds clicked on the part of the notes headed "Message Files" to jump to it.
Aside from initial confusion with the play and record button, the user did not make any errors in using the interface. He said that the most irritating part of it was how enlarging the video while taking notes made you have to scroll sideways after inserting a large snapshot, and pointed out that the smaller video size was not useful to see what was going on while taking notes. However, since in a functional implementation the video on screen would match up with what was happening in the real world, enlarging the video while taking notes would probably not be a common case. He also was surprised that the enlargement button did not make the video go full screen.