GR6 - User Testing
Design & Implementation
- High level design decisions:
- A primary design decision we made was to ground the app around user-contributed images, that is, pictures and thumbnails they take and provide of products that they own. This decision, we found, was effective in that it gave users flexibility as to how they wanted specific items organized, and gave users their own mental model of what the images actually were.
- Simplicity was a key feature of our prototype -- we received positive feedback from all levels of testing that the simplicity of our user interface made it much easier to use. We were initially afraid that the interface would be too simple in that it would effect learnability; however, a reduced layout actually contributed to learnability and efficiency.
GUI Section | ScreenShot | Design | Implementation |
|---|---|---|---|
Home Page | | Users are first greeted by our home page, which is a simple layout of buttons. Relative button size corresponds with frequency of use -- that is, the larger buttons are more frequently used than the smaller ones. This data was found from user polling and testing. |
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| | We opted to make collection view laid out with images and with names of the item underneath it. Initially we toyed around with text or image only, but we found during our testing that users responded best when both were available. Clicking the menu button brought up a bottom menu. Long-pressing on an item in the collection would bring up a more detailed menu; however, we found this to be among the most difficult menu for users to find (more detailed in evaluation). | Collections are a model of their own, which contain links to other images. |
| | A simple, non-obtrusive item adding layout was most effective for our purposes. We feared, initially, that users would find it not revealing enough and would have understanding problems; however, users seemed to pick up fairly quickly on how to add items to their collections. |
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| | Adding a new collection has a similar unobstructive interface. This also adds for consistency across our application. |
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| | To share a collection, we enter the sharing menu and input the name and editing privileges. This sharing menu was one of our most difficult design decisions, and the current iteration of it is thanks to input from paper and computer prototyping. Our previous design decisions were too complicated, and we found this current one simple and easy for users to use. |
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| | Searching for items in our application is as simple as clicking on filter and typing. |
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Implementation
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- High level implementation decisions:
- We chose to implement this software on Android because the picture taking functionality translated best on a mobile application. We utilized the Android SDK, coding primarily in Java. The frontend was handled with Android's own XML view layer. The backend was handled with SQLite databases.
- In general, we followed a Model-View-Controller pattern, where the ContentProvider and SQLite abstracted the database information into data models, the XML layer contained the View, and the bulk of the Java code was the controller.
- One major implementation problem we encountered was simply lack of familiarity with the platform. None of our team members had ever programmed in Android before, and found the learning curve sufficiently steep enough to be problematic.
GUI Section | ScreenShot | Design | Implementation |
|---|---|---|---|
Home Page | | Users are first greeted by our home page, which is a simple layout of buttons. Relative button size corresponds with frequency of use -- that is, the larger buttons are more frequently used than the smaller ones. This data was found from user polling and testing. | Many elements of the application, including this particular page, operate solely in the view. This view does not have access to the backend data of the application, allowing for abstracting and safety. |
Collection View | | We opted to make collection view laid out with images and with names of the item underneath it. Initially we toyed around with text or image only, but we found during our testing that users responded best when both were available. Clicking the menu button brought up a bottom menu. Long-pressing on an item in the collection would bring up a more detailed menu; however, we found this to be among the most difficult menu for users to find (more detailed in evaluation). | Collections are a model of their own, which contain links to other images. |
New Item/Item Properties | | A simple, non-obtrusive item adding layout was most effective for our purposes. We feared, initially, that users would find it not revealing enough and would have understanding problems; however, users seemed to pick up fairly quickly on how to add items to their collections. | Items were a model that were linked to Tags and Collections. Tags were utilized primarily for searching. |
New Collection/Collection Properties | | Adding a new collection has a similar unobstructive interface. This also adds for consistency across our application. | Collections also contained extra information such as name, description, thumbnail data, and who shared with. |
Sharing Manager | | To share a collection, we enter the sharing menu and input the name and editing privileges. This sharing menu was one of our most difficult design decisions, and the current iteration of it is thanks to input from paper and computer prototyping. Our previous design decisions were too complicated, and we found this current one simple and easy for users to use. | Sharing is primarily executed from an external server, which the application contacts to touch base with contacts you share with. |
Filtering | | Searching for items in our application is as simple as clicking on filter and typing. | Filtering functions on demand -- as the user types, the application quickly sorts through tags and shows the application whose substring matches the text apparent in the filter box. |
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Evaluation
- In general, we found that users found the application easy to use and navigate. Users enjoyed the simplicity of the application and the ability to do the same task through multiple, but natural, avenues.
- The users we chose were representative of our population in that we chose users from different age ranges, who also generally found the need to organize large amounts of items.
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