Design and Implementation
Main Page
The interface we designed is meant to be task-centric; that is, rather than focusing on allowing the users (dorm management staff) to most easily view static information about the dorm (i.e. information about rooms and who's living in them), it is meant to allow the users to most easily view and manipulate "tasks" (i.e. information structures about the people currently moving in or moving out). We felt that this was the most efficient for management, since users seemed to want to know what needed to be done at a given time more than the state of the dorm at the given time (though later in user testing, we did receive a small amount of feedback indicating the other way around might be useful).
To accomplish this sort of interface, we broke it into 3 separate webpages, which we called a main page, a floor plan page, and a task creation page. The main page is intended to present information about the current tasks on hand, and have continuous updating on whether select parts of move-ins and move-outs have been completed, allowing the user to know right upon entering the page what has most recently been accomplished, and also efficiently look through all current tasks for relevant ones and manage them. The task creation page is meant to allow users to create move-ins or move-outs and store in the system for convenient management later, and the floor plan page is meant to allow management staff to quickly understand positional and macro-scale information about rooming throughout the dorm.
We felt that these three pages were necessary because the goals provided by each of them provided unique information which users indicated would be very useful, their functions are fairly separate, and putting the information from multiple of them into one page seemed to make it convoluted.
To implement our interface, we used web programming technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Boostrap, for our frontend, as well as Parse to store our database of constructed objects. These were used since we felt that the web was necessary for management staff to be able to use the application on their own devices and still communicate with each other, and these first five were standard tools in web programming that made our frontend implementation straightforward; Parse we used for our backend because of familiarity with it, and satisfaction with its robustness for this project.
Main Page
| Panel |
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DesignThe main page is the default landing page for users. It's main use is to keep track of the |
| Panel |
DesignThe main page is the default landing page for users. It's main use is to keep track of the current active tasks. |
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Test Observations
User 1: Desk Worker
Task 1
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- The user
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- seems surprised when the task search autocompletes name, indicating a learnability issue, possibly some problem with external consistency we're not aware of.
- The user didn't seem sure that the task was updated when they clicked the "save changes" button, indicating a possible issue with safety; possibly some more feedback is required.
Task 2
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- The users quickly figured out the stats of the floor after navigating through the floor plan
Task 3
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- The user seems confused at the beginning when he was ask to start a move task for Tina. He thought he can search to find the person as in task 1 (but since the task is not created, it's not there yet). After thinking for 30s, he navigated to the Start New Task button.
- The user didn't pay attention to the useful information until he was stuck on finding certain information to fill out the form such as student ID, old address. He needs a reminder from the facilitator to figure out he can find those information from the useful information.
- He also had problem with the Default Task button on the right because he thinks that will clear all of the information that he has filled in so far and put in the default information for the whole page.
Task 4
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- Since the user knew about the start new task page, he navigated to it quicker than task 3. However, he didn't use the MIT directory to auto-fill other information until the facilitator suggested him to.
- After clicking submit button, the user was taken to the main page, and was confused a bit if the information has gone through.
Task 5
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- The user was confused on where to look for resident information. He tried the search function on the main page first and then follow the suggestion by the facilitator to explore other options on the page to click on Floor plan.
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User 2: Dorm manager
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Task 1
- The user seemed confused about the filter options and need explanation on that.
- She also didn't understand what the 0/4 on the progress bar represents.
Task 2
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- The user spent 1 minute on the main page to look for floor information, and she tried to use the search function of the main page to look this up. After the facilitator's suggestion, she navigated through floor plan and figure the stats information.
Task 3
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- The user took a while to figure out how to start a new task. The user suggested that room assignment is handled by the rooming chair rather than the house manager.
- The user never used the auto-fill function on the right panel. She submitted the form and leave some of the options blank.
Task 4
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- The user quickly navigated to the start new task page this time, but still don't use the auto-fill functionality.
Task 5
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- The users tried to search for this information on the main page first. Then she clicks on floor plan after hearing the hint from the facilitator
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User comment
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- User wants to have the room and resident information on the main page (resident centric rather than task centric) so that she can quickly look up information such as the requirement in task 5.
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- Resident name should be separate into first Name and last Name.
- The user thinks having room size (in square foot) might be useful.
- The Overall reaction is positive.
User 3: Desk Worker
Task 1
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- The user finished this task very quickly without any problem.
Task 2
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- The user didn't notice at first and still search on the main page for the floor information. After suggestion from the facilitator, he navigated to the floor plan to look up the information.
Task 3
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- The user didn't notice the auto-fill option. He didn't see the list of available room. He had to navigate to the floor plan in order to find the information of vacant room. After he came back, his previous information disappeared.
- He needed reminder in order to use the auto-fill option.
Task 4
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- He finishes this task faster and used the auto-fill option.
Task 5
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- He navigates to the floor plan to find the information after the facilitator's suggestion.
Iteration Considerations
Reflections
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