GR6 - User Testing
Design
Implementation
MenuMe was implemented for Mobile Web utilizing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. No formal framework was used. The key feature of the application was the user's ability to swipe away restaurants in which they were not interested, and retain restaurants that were appealing to them. The goal was simplicity, and this design choice achieved this.
As seen in the first computer prototype, users could initially drag the restaurant tiles around. If the tiles moved more than a certain number of pixels from the starting point, the information on the tile was changed to contain a new restaurant's data. A user could then click the tile to highlight it and keep it on the page. While the implementation worked, learnability was not great since the actual process of choosing two restaurants was not immediately apparent. Also, the process of dragging a tile was not synonymous with removing it.
To fix these usability issues, we removed dragging and bound 'swipe' event handlers to every tile. Swiping a tile removes it, and an animation shows a new one taking its place. This animation is much more intuitive, and users responded by actually knowing what to do without a demo. Another new implementation choice involved showing a loading screen when the app starts. This loading screen showed an animation in the background of tiles being swiped away and new ones arriving. This animation greatly increased the learnability, and the feedback was much better.
The other implementation features of Google Maps navigation and phone calls was straightforward. The main implementation problem involved the swiping of tiles and generally how users picked two restaurants to compare. We concluded that our application successfully conveyed the correct message to users through the implementation, and the application met our satisfaction.