Observations:

Aaron Glasserman, 1:30 pm Wednesday 2/20/13

I asked Aaron if I could walk with him to his 6-person Persian seminar and ask him a few questions about his experience. He told me he had to stop by Campus Club to print something. I asked him whether it was readings or homework, and he replied that he would have printed out readings ahead of time and that this was homework. I also asked how he picked Campus Club, and he said that he was walking by Campus anyway and if the printer there were broken, he could always go print in Frist. When we got to Campus Club, the cluster was crowded, but no one was actively printing pages. I asked at what point he would just go on to Frist, and he said if someone were printing pages when he got there, he would go to Frist instead. Aaron began to log on, and then turned to our friend who was already logged in to a cluster computer and asked if he could print using the friend’s login. He said that the cluster computers sometimes take annoyingly long to log in. In my experience, I mostly print things from the web, rather than my H drive, so I don’t need to log in to my account, just an account. In this situation, if there were a guest account that was always logged in and could be easily switched to, that would be much easier. As he was printing, he realized that he had left some notes to himself at the end of the assignment, so he had to delete those and then reprint. Homework printed!

Then, we headed to Witherspoon’s in Frist for a coffee.

“It’s a long seminar, so I’m going to treat myself to something nicer.”

Unfortunately, there was a long line! Aaron was debating going back to Tower for a coffee, but after watching the line for a moment, we saw that it was moving pretty quickly.

 I asked Aaron if there were any tasks he needed to do for class or wanted to do for fun that he’d like to do while walking between classes. He said that for Persian class, he has to pull vocabulary words from recent news headlines. Also, he likes to read the news. He mentioned that for Chinese language classes, a three-sided “flashcard” with english, pinyin, and characters would be cool.

Sean Power, 2:30 pm Wednesday 2/20/13

Sean was waiting for someone that he was going to walk to class with, but then it turned out his friend was in Frist and they would just meet at class. He said that usually it’s a coincidence if he walks to class with someone. He doesn’t have any readings to print out for this class, because he splits up the readings in a group. Before class, the person responsible for that week’s readings emails out a summary to the group. Sean doesn’t always have time to read the summary before class, so he sometimes reads it during the first few minutes of class. Sean helps run Orange Key, so he gets a lot of emails. He’s also obsessive about keeping his inbox clean. He has a hard time emailing while walking, because he can’t get enough words written. Instead, he usually texts the author of the email. Often he finds that he’s deleted or archived an email, and then forgotten to take care of what he needed to. He makes one to-do list on his phone for urgent things, and another on the Stickies app on his computer for medium-term things.

Alex Judge, 3:30 pm Wednesday 2/20/13

Alex was really bored between the end of his class at 3 pm and the start of precept for that class at 3:30 pm. When I met him at 3:15, he was moving a mouse randomly around his screen, trying to find some more fun way of procrastinating. He said that he usually comes to Tower between those two classes to read emails, surf the web, and check Facebook. He spent most of the time on Facebook chat or talking to friends. In order to get to class on time, Alex sets his watch fast. Although, we ended up getting to class about 2 mins late when Alex lost track of time.

Brainstorming

Collaborated with Phil Oasis, Aaron Glasserman, Paige Tsai, and Megan Karande

1. 3-sided “flashcard” app (character drawing, pronunciation, english) for use before Chinese language classes with tone and drawn character recognition
2. Guest accounts always logged in on cluster computers that would keep people from having to log in when all their files are on the web anyway
3. Wait time measuring stations at print clusters, food places, etc that you could subscribe to on an app (like weather forecasts almost) and then prioritize where to go when
4. Social walking app that uses your current location and calendar (for destinations), and communicates with the app on friends’ phones to coordinate walking together
5. App that lets you reply to emails with texts, and loads them into the Gmail conversation
6. Browser plugin that lets you move emails from your inbox to a to-do list, and helps you copy only the pertinent information
7. Voice dictation hardware that is more stylish or makes talking to yourself more socially acceptable
8. Interface that helps you procrastinate – when you stop giving the computer useful input (mouse clicks or keyboard commands), it starts serving you popular content
9. Glasses that display text/media you’re trying to read overlaid on the real world so you can walk while checking your email
10. Smart to-do list that orders items based on your estimate of how long it will take to do them, and your available time based on your calendar
11. App that parses emails from the FreeFood listserv, and shows you the locations, time stamps, and food items
12. Alarm for class that won’t stop until you begin walking, and are heading in the correct direction for class
13. Sensor for when your Frist mailbox isn’t empty and texts you
14. Mobile ordering system for the Tower lunch grill; lets you place orders while walking from class to Tower, and tells you expected wait time
15. Portable clock projector that displays the time on the wall in classrooms without a clock; helps make sure class starts and ends on time

Two Favorite Ideas

Three-sided “flashcard”

My conversations with Aaron and other students of Chinese convinced me of how useful the character and pronunciation training would be and how the current solutions fall short.

Mobile Grill Ordering

Tower lunch has an open grill that gets overcrowded at the 12:20 pm rush – this app lets people see if they have time to get food between classes or put in an early order.

Paper Prototypes

Mobile Grill Ordering

Main Screen If you want to look at the menu, click the green Menu button. That takes you to the Menu Page. If you want to expand one of the panes there that isn’t shown, click on it. Then click on any grill item to order it. Ordering from the menu. To order from one of the blue items on the main screen (your most commonly ordered items), simply press it. Or, if you’re in the mood for a surprise, choose that! When you order any item from the menu or the main screen, you have the chance to put in Special Requests, which you type into the box shown. Once you hit okay, you have a chance to Confirm Your Order. At this point, the order is sent to the grill staff via a screen behind the bar (interface not designed). When your order is ready and the grill staff delete your order from their on-screen queue, you get a Notification from the grill app. If you’ve already ordered a smoothie today and you try to order another, or if you’ve ordered a food item and try to order another, this Popup shows. If you’ve got extra food or are still hungry, press the pink Share button on the main screen. Press and drag with your finger to scroll through the list of shared items. You can Post your food on the sharing board, and you can Choose whether you want to give up half of your item or the whole thing. The app posts the item that you previously ordered in the amount you specify. To pick up someone else’s shared item, simply click that item, then Confirm that you . The person who shared that item will get a Notification.

Chinese Language “Flashcards”

First, choose a Vocabulary List. Then, on the Start Page, drag the pin to the side of the flashcard that you want to be provided with (you’ll be tested on the rest). If you’ve previously worked on this list, you’ll have the option to Resume. Once you’ve chosen one of those options, you’ll be tested on the three sections that aren’t pinned. In this case, you start with English. Hit the Done button to check your answer. If you got it right, you’ll see the next testing page. If not, you’ll be told you were Incorrect, and you’ll be given the chance to see or hear the correct answer. Other testing modes are Speaking/Pronunciation and Character Drawing. In any of these testing screens, hit the pin to go back to the Start Page and choose a different side of the flashcard to be presented with. For example, display the Chinese Characters.

Feedback

Aaron Glasserman

At first, I thought Aaron understood moving the pin in order to select the front side of the card. Then he drug the pin over to pinyin, wrote the pinyin, drug the pin over to the character panel, and wrote the character. If this had been a real app, nothing would have happened when he tried to write/draw on the home screen.

He was confused by the speaker/microphone tab as well. He drug the pin to the speaker icon, and expected the app to pronounce the word. He then moved the pin to the microphone icon, and pronounced the word.

Also, he thought that the vocabulary list name was the front side of the card, so he wrote, drew, and said the pinyin, characters, and sounds for the word “family.” After testing was over, he said that most people learn characters by writing them over and over, so a “drill” function would be really useful. Regarding the word list, he said that I should make the text smaller or put it in parentheses to emphasize that it is not a flashcard.

Sam Zeluck

After working with Aaron, I added a prompt to the screen where users choose the “front” side of the flashcard. Sam had no problem with the screen after that. After she pressed the start button to begin the flashcards, she did need prompting before she typed the pinyin. Drawing the characters was more intuitive. The start button on the speak screen wasn’t obvious to her. She mentioned that since you don’t need the screen space for anything, that a prompt would be useful. She kept forgetting to press the Done button to move to the next “side” of the flashcard, so I just waited for her to remember each time.

She said that a card summary feature that displayed the english, pinyin, character, and spoke the word would be really useful. Also, Sam said that preloaded language packs for each chapter of a book that came with the language book would be a great addition. One of Sam’s friends in a summer language program had a flashcard app that she found very useful, and Sam liked the added ability to draw the character on the screen in my app.

Paige Tsai

Paige often stopped and asked for clarification or explanation of screens on the app. She said that popup prompts for most screens the first time a user opened the app would be a good addition. I found it difficult not to take the place of those prompts by giving instructions when she seemed stuck.

Paige requested several features:

1. Ability to flip a card and look at the answer
2. Ability to select which “reverse” sides of the card to be tested on, because some classes don’t require people to learn pinyin, for example

Insight

When making a paper prototype that will allow people to draw on the screen, find some way to make nothing happen when the user is in the wrong app state. In other words, if the user is drawing with a pen, have them draw what they would on another piece of paper, and then only transfer the drawing to the app screen if that actually would have happened.

Although the app components made from sticky notes did allow me to reuse pieces and move them around during the design process, they were not as effective during testing. I was inspired by the paper prototyping video we watched in class with the accordion fold pieces, scrolling, etc. However, it took to long to move the pieces around in response to the actions of the users. Next time, I will use only flashcards with each screen filled out completely in advance. Then, I’ll make many photocopies of each screen so that users can draw on the screens. Especially for a mobile app that users would use while walking/standing up, this makes more sense.

One possible way of adding only necessary prompts would be to take your almost-ready interface, show it to users, and wait until they need prompting or help. Then, add a prompt that pops up on the first several uses of the app that contains a minimal message communicating that same help. I personally dislike popup prompts, and I let that prejudice influence my design.

I didn’t think enough about the role of text size. The distinction between vocabulary list selection and front side of the flashcard wasn’t clear to my users. I think that fonts are not important in a paper prototype, but text size definitely is.

Through this process, I realized that “clever” interface tricks are not so clever. The pin for selecting the side of the flashcard that the user sees confused people. In the future, I’ll stick to more familiar paradigms.