In this blog post, I will detail how I set out to design a way to make use of the 10 minute periods of time that crop up here and there for the average Princeton student.

How I conducted my observations: 

I interviewed several people that I know, as well as several random people sitting around working in common rooms. I first asked them what they did in-between classes.

If they answered that they were always walking to class, I asked them what sort of things they tend to do while walking to class.

Answers tended to be along the lines of “get there as quickly as possible,” and “talk to friends.”  One interesting response was “stop off to find the nearest stapler, when I have a paper or homework to staple”. Another strange response was “I think of weird things.”

Since this was a bit narrow, I decided to focus more on the people who were actually waiting in a classroom or lecture hall before the class began. There were a variety of responses:

Several people liked to review their notes for precept, read the book for the class, or get started on homework for the class. Some people just stared at the blackboard and did nothing. Several people go on Facebook, read books, or read websites. Others shop online or call/text their friends. They also talk with people surrounding them (but this is usually their friends). Another important subject that came up was reminders: particularly regarding remembering to print papers out for class. The most common response by far, however, was emailing: More than 50% of the people I talked to said they checked their email during spots of 5-10 minutes.

Regarding email, the specific things people did were:

1. Mark important emails to respond to later

2. Look for events that look interesting that you want to put on your calendar

3. Remind yourself of meetings that are upcoming in the day, or schedule/organize meetings

I also observed people in classes and confirmed these actions. I also observed some of my teachers–since most of them arrived late or just on time, there wasn’t too much variety. Several of my teachers tend to make sure their notes are in order before class begins.  While observing, I also noticed some behaviors no one had reported in an interview. For instance, there was one person reading a comic book right before class, which was pretty unique! I also observed my math teacher brushing his teeth in class once right before class.  My writing sem teacher (Joe Califf) said that he thought that when he came to Princeton, he’d be going to lectures by cool profs on cool topics all the time– but that doesn’t really happen because he ends up being so busy, and never hears about the talks! (this was a motivation for one of the following ideas in the brainstorm). Also, teachers often take attendance at the beginning of class.

Here are the notes I took when I observed one of the classes (COS 226 on 2/25/13):

Some people were listening to music, going on facebook and just scrolling through the home page, some talked to friends, were drinking coffee, reviewing notes on an iPad, cleaning their glasses, reviewing lecture slides for the class, and chatting with each other about code.

Here’s a list of people I questioned and observed:

Hansen Qian

Michael Yuan

Yicheng Sun

Keji Xu

Jean Wang

Christine Chien

Shreya Nathan

Dean Makino

Lydia Demissachew

Michelle Deng

Sam Wu

Swetha Dopplapudi

Richard Chiou

Mo Luo

 

Brainstorm List: 

1. Auto-Pset: A modified laptop with display and writing surface that keeps track of your schedule, so it knows what classes you were most recently at and can therefore judge what you might want to be working on! It brings up all relevant files on the screen automatically, and uploads anything you write on the surface to an appropriate folder. 

2. Walk&Chat: A smartphone app that figures out which people who have the app are close-by, and lets you know where other people physically are.

3. SmartCardz: A calendar-aware smart phone study aid test review game: lets you easily review key terms/dates/definitions for the specific class that’s about to start (it knows your schedule).

4. SmartTv: A calendar aware phone app that lets you know what interesting shows are on that night, but also lets you know if you have a conflict with some event on your calendar/too much hw due the next day

5. MakeMeUp: A mirror that has a camera in it and acts like a display with a small compartment for makeup.

6. SocialLifter: A small, portable dumb-bell to encourage quick 5-10 minute workouts before class that posts to a private Facebook group (of friends) every week to let everyone know each others’ progress.

7. ShopQwik: A shopping game smart phone app that knows your shopping history and so gives you a list of 10 or so things you might want to buy, as well as a pre-set budget for the week. The goal would be to buy as much possible with as little money as possible!

8. LectureMeeter: A laptop app that introduces you to people you don’t know in your big lectures classes.

9. PrincetonRealTalk: A smart phone app that knows when and where all the cool lectures are (that you can attend), automatically lets you know and lets you add to your calendar! 

10. Remindr: Smart software that auto-creates a reminder list by intelligently parsing your recent emails and updates to calendar automatically! 

11. EventFindr: A phone app that presents you a Princeton event, lets you know what it conflicts with on your calendar, and allows you to add it, delete it, or postpone a decision. 

12. FoodMeetup: A phone app that lets you see which of your friends are available to eat when you feel like eating breakfast/lunch/dinner!

13. ShortestPath: A phone app that knows your schedule and automatically calculates the fastest, even if obscure, path to where you need to be next.

14. QwikPrint: A smart phone printing app: whenever you save something to a specific Cloud folder, it uploads a reminder to your phone, telling you to print it. Then, when you open the app on your phone, tap the reminder to print to the closest printer!

15. StaplrAlert: Finds the closest stapler to you, and gives you directions to it so that you need not check every library/study area that’s nearby for the ever-absent staplers!

16. WeirdPrincetonians: While you’re walking to class, speak whatever random thought that comes to your head, and it’ll be posted to a website where other people can see and comment on the thoughts.

17. InstAttendance: An app for the teacher that checks attendance for class by monitoring when people enter the room. When someone enters the room, they are detected (by cameras) and marked present, and also time-stamped. At the end of the class, an attendance summary is emailed to the teacher.

Why I choose my two ideas: 

I proposed all these ideas as apps to various people, so I picked the ones that got the best response that I also found the coolest.

Idea 1: FoodMeetup: I got quite good feedback for FoodMeetup: in particular, someone loved the idea and said they would absolutely use it. Also, it solves a problem regarding meeting people outside your usual friend group at Princeton by introducing you to people you wouldn’t normally come into contact with as much, and makes it easier to set up lunches or dinners with people who are not in the class right before lunch.

Idea 2: EventFindr: The UI for signing up for events and talks at Princeton is currently terrible: it’s all over the place. EventFindr would enable more people to go to more events, and just be more aware of all the opportunities surrounding them. It would also encourage more interactions between students in class: one person might use the app, and exclaim to everyone surrounding them, “Hey! That’s a cool event. Anyone else want to come?” It’s designed for use in small periods of time, so the UI is very simple.

Photos of my prototypes!:

FoodMeetup: 

 

 

 

 

EventFindr:

 

 

 

 

 

Photos, descriptions, and notes from user testing: 

FoodMeetup:

Test User: Keji Xu

Video of test: http://youtu.be/xwVUXjeOOGY

According to my test user, the prototype was relatively intuitive to navigate, but he would have liked the menu to be better.

Things that could be improved about the menu: The menu was designed around the people, but my user thought that the food should be more emphasized.

Additionally, collisions were important to the user: he wanted to know whether a meal he was selecting conflicted with a calendar event or another meal.

He was also slightly confused by the Past Meals tab: I had to clarify that it was the past meals that the user had attended. So more emphasis on the user would be better. Similarly, for the “no one is attending” in the Upcoming Meals tab, he suggested that I automatically add the name of the user (the user should be a default attender).

Furthermore, he suggested that there be starred users: your best friends who you immediately want to know what they’re doing when you are on the first screen. He suggested a live feed of friends you frequently eat with.

To encourage meeting new people, my user suggested that there be an “I’m feeling lucky” button, perhaps it adds you to the nearest public meal.

Also I needed to put a Back button on the Available Meals menu, because it’s inconvenient to select a meal and then go back.

Finally, there should have been a Login area with a whole “friend” network, perhaps taken from Facebook or the like. The app assumes the user is already signed up.

Test User: Mo Luo

Photos of testing:

As my user played with the app, I took notes on the gist of what he said:

“It makes sense, there isn’t much else to figure out… not really confusing, seems like this is for a phone.” He went through the app fairly methodically and was able to intuitively grasp the functionality.  In the Past Meals section, however, when he clicked on one of the meals, he expected a screen to pop up with more information about the meal, which wasn’t there.

He made some comments on improvements:

He questioned what would happen if you wanted to plan a meal with someone who was not in your contacts list, or if someone not in your contacts list wanted to join (making the assumption that only phone contacts would be used). He thought a friend system (similar to the first tester) would be an improvement.  He also thought a reminder system (for your meeting) would be a good improvement. He thought the premise of meeting people you don’t know could be interesting, but cautioned against a flooding effect: what if too many people try to join a meal? He also thought there were some issues with the confirmation paradigm (how are meal requests accepted and denied?)

Overall though, he thought he might use it now and then and that it has a definite useful function.

Test User: Hansen Qian 

Photos of testing:

He immediately thought that the app was on a phone, and payed special attention to the Near Me and At Princeton sections on the “Join a Meal” part of the app (Others had previously not done this). He also noted the name of the events as something important.

This user also wanted to click on a meal in Upcoming Meals in order to see more details, but that functionality was not there. He thought the list of contacts on the Create a Meal screen was not done well — instead of a drop down menu, there should be a button that directs the user to a list of the iPhone’s contacts (so he assumed that the contacts you could add would be from the phone itself). He also suggested that there be an edit button, so you can update information about meals (perhaps there would be a screen for meals you created).

His primary response after using the app was: How are you going to get people to use the app? In other words, for this type of app, it’s absolutely necessary that lots of people use it, otherwise, functionality will be poor.

He also would have added more hidden features, and make options more customizable. He didn’t think he would use the app because it was too specific: he didn’t think it should focus on just finding meals with other people, but have a more broad range of events–perhaps even merge with the EventFindr app.

EventFindr: 

Test User: Keji Xu 

Video of test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQG8LNqkYwc

He thought there was too much stuff on “My Interests”, hesitating at first cause he didn’t know what to do. When he first went there, he was like “Wait.. what happens?” Two at time would be better than several.

My test user was not sure about the ability to add conflicting events — he said it might be better to instead let the user delete an event by going to Upcoming Events, and highlight the conflicting events in Upcoming Events instead of having text that warns you. And you could delete an event by simply sliding your finger to delete.

My user also suggested that the Upcoming Events section could be extended to a queue-style calendar, where you can delete events by performing some swiping motion. There would be a pointer to the current time along the events.

In the Edit Interests section, my user noted an issue if you have interests that don’t exist in the database. I explained that the interests kind of work like tags (search events with keywords in a database to return the events), but he suggested that you might not get as accurate results, which is a valid point. So this area needs to be thought about a bit more.

He also suggested that jumping to the calendar instead of staying in the app would not be a bad idea. Or, it should automatically go back to the previous screen. (No need for the Back button).

Another suggestion he made for an addition is seeing which friends are attending which events.

However, my user thought that it would be a great app to make! He noted that the stream abstraction of events was a very useful concept, especially for use in a 10 min (max) time period before class.

Test User: Mo Luo

Photos of testing:

My user instantly assumed that there would be a personal profile with interests, so in light of that, the “My Interests” button which links to the event stream could be a confusing title.

Upon looking at each event, he expected there would be a name of who started the event (i.e. the club the event was part of, or the person) –> this suggests that he expected more personal events, like perhaps dorm parties. After he added the event, instead of going back to the previous screen, he expected the app to go to a list of upcoming events. He also assumed the events were going in chronological order (which they were)

After going through all the functionalities of the app, he made some comments:

1. The interest profile could get cluttered (Edit Interests tab), and also the stream could be cluttered with too many events (if you had too many interests, if there were a bunch at the same time)

2. He expected that he could add a specific event on a specific day, as opposed to aimless browsing. So a search function for events based on date/time/interest might be really helpful.

3. He thought more filters would be good (as opposed to simply interests and random) — search via specific filters.

4. Again, regarding the interest profile, he questioned how it knew what you meant when you entered in some string as an interest — what if it wasn’t recognized, or was misspelled, etc. I answered that it would use the interests as search terms in the list of events, and do some sort of Bayesian classification scheme to pick events that look interesting with high probability, but still, pre-selectable interests may be an option worth considering.

Test User: Michael Yuan

Photos of test:

When the test subjected added an event to a calendar that already had an event previously scheduled, he wanted to know what else is going on at the time, so he suggested that we see a view of the schedule after adding a conflicting event.

He also asked what happens when you add an event in the event stream. This question prompted me to decide to highlight events you are attending in the stream.

He then tried to add “partying” as an interest twice in the Edit Interests section, which would be possible if you spelled partying differently– this highlighted again a scenario in which the importance of pre-selected options may be a good idea. Still on the subject of interest tags, he also wanted to know what other people found interesting: which tags are the most popular? Also, he thought it would be a good idea to show the tags each event is associated with on the event stream.

When looking at Upcoming Events, when he clicked on the place, he expected a screen to pop up which showed him how to get there. Similarly, when he clicked on the date, he expected it to show what else was going on that day.

 

Overall, the user thought everything was relatively clear as to where things were. He did however want an option to show all the events in a calendar style, and the ability to create your own events. However, he said that he would most often use this app to “find events that [he] would normally add to [his] Google calendar” — in other words, if he was bored that evening and wanted to look for something to do, he might take out this app before class sometime to find some interesting event to go to, which is exactly the use case of this app!

Testing insights:

Several things I learned while prototyping and getting feedback:

1. Prototyping provides a really good start to getting things moving along –I feel like the cards I made would be extremely useful when actually making the app in iOS, since I would know how all the screens fit together. I also catch early problems with screen transitions thanks to my test users.

2. Many new interesting ideas pop up when testing and prototyping–things that seem obvious when actually going through the motions (like a starred friends view in FoodMeetup) are not necessarily obvious when initially designing.

3. Even though the paper is a rough rough draft of the final app, I can already design some of the aesthetic I want –namely through placement of buttons and styles of buttons. Making these decisions before hand improves the overall unity and symmetry of the first iteration of the actual implemented design.

4. Sometimes things I thought were obvious and simple and intuitive (for example, the scrolling of the events in EventFindr — in fact there were too many events per screen space) were not for other users–it would be a big problem if I was the only one who thought the interface was intuitive!

5. Often, people have conflicting opinions on how an app should look aesthetically, and work in terms of structure: some people preferred the minimalist interface, and others wanted more features. It’s hard to please everyone.

6. Paying attention to the number of users needed to have an interface be successful is important–for example, Facebook could be the nicest interface in the world, but it would lose all functionality unless your friends used it. There was a similar issue with Food Meetup: if not enough people used it, it would die out pretty quickly as a useful, fun interface.

7. There’s a strong difference between apps that allow users to create content and apps that only allow users to browse and select content. Namely, it becomes much more tricky to make the interface clean and smooth for EventFindr if there are potentially thousands of events that individuals have made out there. Conversely, if there are too stringent controls on what other people see, events people make may not be seen at all, which is bad as well for those who want to create content. So some balance must be found.

8. Mobile is a very good interface for doing things on the go that require screens. In fact, it dominates.