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A couple (Anne, Joe) with a kid (Andrew) are tourists in Boston. They decided to go to the Aquarium and they arrive at about 11am. The line for buying tickets has about 70 people waiting and the couple don't have too much time because they would like to visit other places in Boston during the weekend. While in the line, the staff informed that they can buy tickets on-line using their cellphones and in that case they can skip the line and go to the priority access line which is empty. Joe tried to buy the tickets on-line but he found he needs to register. He did try but the cellphone is a little bit uncomfortable for typing and selecting, so after dealing with the website he abandoned the idea and they stay on-line. After 45 minutes spent in buying tickets, they get into the Aquarium and Andrew saw an advertisement about the Blue Little Penguins. Andrew asked his parent to go there but they were confused because the Penguins are signaled to be in the main exhibition place but since the aquarium is currently in reconstruction they were moved. They tried to find the Penguins following the arrows marked in the floor but they got confused, in part because there is so many people in the place and there are arrows for different species, that they got to the wrong floor. They went back and Andrew started playing with a touchscreen system but the parents were unable to find the information in the interactive guide. Finally they saw a member of the staff who helped them to get to the penguins. After that they continued walking through the aquarium and they discovered an exhibit was running in a place hidden at the entrance but it was just about to finish. |
Note: This is an adaptation of real situations observed in the aquarium.
Tasks involved in this scenario:
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- (T4) Find information about an interesting specie that is in a tank.
- (T5) Make a plan for the visit.
2. Individual design sketches
This section presents the individual designs:
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2.
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This section presents the individual designs:
2.1 Claudia
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For the children, the interface provides the info about different animal species in a fun way. At a specific tank, there should be a touchscreen that provides info about the species in that tank. It shows the fish swimming/moving in the sea and children could click on the fish and a bubble will pop up to show information about that fish. The bubble should be big enough to display the text at appropriate font size.
2) Design 2
The design is task-based. There are 4 main tasks: see the aquarium map, explore exhibitions and species, plan and schedule their trips and buy tickets.
3) Design for non-computer interface
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- The metaphor could be hard for older people and people with less imagination to understand.
- People needs time to understand the metaphor.
- It’s counter-intuitive that buying for the ticket is associated with clicking an underwater treasure box. Because it makes more sense to relate clicking on a treasure box to gaining some wealth.
Efficiency
Pros:*
- Show the exhibition and species at the same location side by side. So it is relatively efficient to get info on a particular location.
Cons:*
- For user who wants to search for the info for a particular exhibition or specie, it is hard to find a particular specie/ exhibition on the screen since only rocks and shawls of fish are shown. And there is no “search” option.
Safety
Pros:
- Errors are correctable. Could go back and redo the plan if necessary.
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4. Future work
From the TA and studio feedback, we are considering the following features for next designs:
- Search box (included in Design 2 so far).
- Integration of these ideas in one system for both planning in advance or in the fly.
- Find better approach to the location task in the time-based approach.