Final Writeup

Design

Implementation

The latency associated with loading the search result page was one of the primary usability issues with our interface. Our interface gives the user some feedback about the latency associated with that page through the use of a "loading spinner" and text which indicates that our application is "Finding schools for you...". However, we do not direct the user to a cached version of the search result page if they want to revisit their school selections; the page only displays once it has been reloaded. We did not analyze the implementation bottlenecks that were causing these delays, but in future work, we would want to understand better and address the source of these delays. We would also want to implement a stronger result caching scheme, either in our data representations or in the manner in which the tabs are loaded.

Evaluation

Users

We tested our interface on three users. Our two original user classes were students and parents who were applying to colleges and planning to visit those schools. The three users tested were broadly representative of those user classes. The users in the evaluation were personal contacts of our team members (either 

• MIT undergraduate who has several siblings currently looking at colleges
• Mother of three children with one child currently looking at and visiting colleges and two children who have already completed the college search process
• Mother of two children who have already completed the college search process

Tasks

Our users were given the same tasks that had been given to those testing our paper prototype. Namely:

1. Imagine you are a high school junior with a 3.6 GPA and the following SAT scores: Math: 640, Reading: 690, Writing: 710. Find schools in New England that might be a good fit.  Note: for this prototype the SAT, GPA, and ACT data for each school was randomly generated and does not reflect the actual data associated with that school.
2. Select a few schools that you would like to visit during summer vacation (June 1-8^th, 2013).
3. Plan an itinerary for visiting the schools selected in Task 2.

Users 1 and 3 were briefed on the task in person; User 2 was briefed on the task over Skype (screen-sharing was used to allow for remote observation).

Usability Problems

1. Calendar view does not default to selected trip dates - Major (Fixed)
   Both Users 2 and 3 could not find events on the calendar originally because the calendar view did not default to the selected trip dates. Therefore, users had to navigate through an unfamiliar calendar interface to the dates they desired. This issue was not fully apparent to the developers because the start date of the trip defaults to today. This issue was easily fixed by changing a setting in the calendar initialization.
2. Users must hit refresh button to apply new date range - Major (Fixed)
   After selecting the dates, Users 2 and 3 struggled to apply their changes; they expected that the new dates would take effect immediately. They did not realize they had to hit "Refresh Events" in order to apply their changes. This issue 
3. Users did not understand the map affordances - Major
   Users 2 and 3 did not select schools from the map or click on the map in their initial run through the tasks; older users may be less familiar with viewing and clicking on map clusters. User 1 discovered the affordances associated with the clusters and the map pins by accident. Help text would be a convenient way to allow users to discover these affordances.
4. Users did not immediately understand the relationship between displayed search results and map display - Minor
   The displayed search results only include those search results that are within the viewport of the map. Text which explicitly labeled the list of results could help explain this (e.g., "Results in map view") 
5. Users did not understand the ordering of the search results - Minor
   User 3 did not realize that the schools were ranked according to how well they matched the user's search criteria. Using more explicit text for the results list woud also clarify this issue; a header like "Top Results in this Area" could be an effective fix.

General Feedback

Reflection

Our iterative design process benefited from a solid understanding of the problem; this familiarity with the problem was developed during the need-finding stage of the project. We quickly narrowed down 

The computer prototyping and implementation would have been made much easier had we paper prototyped additional designs for the itinerary planning component of our application. Throughout the semester, we grappled with the issue of figuring out how to design the itinerary planning portion of the site such that user interactions would be intuitive, efficient, and safe. Our design evolved significantly over the course of the semester, and we ended up implementing the itinerary planning page about four times.