Recently I was put into a group of four students and set with the task of brainstorming a solution to a problem that a company had and creating a powerpoint presentation to demonstrate our proposed solution. Put simply, the problem was to devise a way for users of an e-commerce interface to share their ratings of certain products with friends and find others whose ratings they trust. We all were in the same place using one computer and we had one hour to complete the task.
Because we had one person doing the actual editing and the rest of us talking about what to do and how to do it, by far our biggest problem was when we wanted the driver of the computer to make a change to something on one of the slides that was being written. We would point to the screen and try to point out where we wanted the change, but this didn't work very well at all, and this violates Scotts idea of the interface supporting our interpersonal interaction. It would possibly be more helpful even if there was a grid on the screen and we could refer to an area by "B5" or something simliar.
Another problem we had was that we couldn't actually accomplish anything material other than what was going on on the one screen we had to work with. Scott talks about this problem when he discusses working in parallel. It would have been better if one person could have been working on the powerpoint, and someone else could have been doing photoshopping of some of the features close by, so that we could all still talk to each other but be more efficient in terms of actual progress.
The last problem arose when we wanted to pull up multiple windows on the screen for the purpose of note-taking. This wasn't possible for us because it would cause the person working on the powerpoint to divert his attention too much and have less room to work with, so instead we used paper to take notes and sketch designs. Basically, we should have had another computer right beside the one we were working on with the displays especially close, so that we could all see everything and multitask a little better.
Posts
When you say that pointing to the screen to indicate what you wanted to change didn’t really work that well, did you have a specific complaint in mind? I’m tempted to think that some kind of grid system for verbally “pointing” would feel less natural to the user than a simple pointing mechanism. If the problem you were referring to has to do with precision (since you’re pointing from far away, your finger might be referring to a general area rather than a specific position), then perhaps it may be a better alternative to use a laser pointer or multiple mouse input devices instead.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to think about in dealing with the problem you had point out areas to edit would be eyetracking. Though it would be somewhat impractical, wouldn't it be cool to have areas of the document change color when being looked at and fade over time? Sometimes I find using pencil and paper is the quickest way to communicate a visual idea to someone. If there were a way to transfer the ideas to the computer and import them into photoshop, either via camera or pressure sensitive table, it would greatly facilitate workflow and in a sense turn any sheet of paper into a personal display/input device.
ReplyDelete