Briefing:

When working in teams, it is often difficult to make sure that everyone is aware of deadlines. Typically it is the job of a group leader to harass team members, reminding them about impending deadlines. Most likely these reminders annoyingly occur too frequently for some team members and not frequently enough for others.

TeamTimer lets you create timers that countdown to certain times. You can then share them with other people.

Scenario:

Pretend your name is Joe. Joe User. You are working on an assignment for UI called GR3, which is due Sunday night at 11:59pm. This is a group assignment; however, your two groupmates, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, are notorious for turning assignments in late. You want to use TeamTimer to send them timers to remind them of the upcoming deadline. Barack Obama is already one of your TeamTimer contacts; however, you must first add Ronald Reagan as a contact.

Tasks:

1. Add Ronald Reagan as a contact (his email is rreagan @mit.edu)
2. Create a Timer for UI GR3 due this coming Sunday at 11:59pm
3. Share with Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan
4. The deadline was extended. Edit the event to this coming Monday at 11:59pm.

Observations:

User 1

• User paused before selecting a date, but then always clicked on the calendar icon as opposed to the textbox for inserting date.
• User unsure what the AM/PM drop-down menu would do before clicking on it.
• User never utilized “View All Contacts” option and instead typed users into the text box and clicked Add for both users
• User curious/unsure of what “pending” list did.
• The user was initially unsure how to edit a timer (though she got it right on the first guess)
• User unsure of Ronald Reagan emails

User 2

• User unsure of Ronald Reagan’s email.
• User unsure of whether or not time text-field was an input box or not
• For editing timers, user clicked on edit arrow (as opposed to treating the entire timer box as clickable)
• User also unsure what “Pending” did.
• Unsure unsure how to add contacts initially.  He created the event and then realized he had to edit the event.  He then clicked “View All Contacts.”  After he closed the “View All Contacts’ screen and the contacts were successfully added, he still clicked the “Add” button on the “Edit Timer” screen.
• Did not realize the timeline was a timeline (he thought the events would just show up in the order they were created)

User 3

• User paused after adding contact, seeming to want some sort of confirmation that contact add was successful.
• Of the users we tested, they were split on whether they chose to Add Users via the auto-complete textbox or by clicking “View All Timers.”  However, this may not be an issue, since none of them seemed to have any trouble figuring out how to add a contact.

Prototype Iteration:

• We added an arrow to displayed timers to indicate an “editable” affordance.
• We pre-filled the AM/PM drop-down menu with a value.
• Since clicking the calendar icon and clicking the date textbox have the same effect, we removed the calendar icon. The date can still be entered manually in the textbox while the calendar is open.
• Modified tasks to specify that Ronald Reagan’s email is rreagan@mit.edu
• Pre-fill time/date textboxes with a default time (ie. current time/date)
• Changed “Pending” text to “Unconfirmed Timers From Your Contacts”
• Changed “Edit” to “Edit/Share”
• On the “List of Timers” screen, replaced “Now” with today’s date and time to make it more clear that it’s a timeline
• Removed “Add” button, so users add a contact by autocomplete
• Add text “Contact Added Successfully” upon adding a contact to provide feedback.

Images

Initial design before user testing

Final user design, after three tests

Default main page

Add contact dialog

Confirmation of action

Create/Edit timer window

Interface to view all contacts and choose who to share with

Default page after three iterations, with a timer