In the past few days one of my course project groups has been implementing a system for a client that needed initial user interface testing to make sure that the client is comfortable with the basic layout and workflow of our system. During user testing, there were four of us sitting around a desk with one computer (my laptop) which had the system running—two of us were project group members, one was our main client, and the last one was one of her associates who would also be using the system. Our goal was to give our client a series of common scenarios/tasks and observe the workflow to see if the interface and functions are intuitive and easy to follow.
Most of the time it was easy for everyone to keep up with what was going on—for example, “interpersonal interactions” came very easily as everyone was a comfortable distance from each other and we were able to talk and gesture.
However, there were several points that the single-display arrangement did not account for. Firstly, “simultaneous user action”s were not supported; I had to take notes from observation while the client was going through tasks and relating commentary to us about her experience so we ended up using another computer that was visible only to me and not my other group member. A more ideal setup would be a large display where I could designate a specific space for note-taking that could be visible to my group member and our client for verification, and both my note-taking window and the system window can be interacted with independently and simultaneously.
“Fluid transitions between activities” was also lacking in the single-display setup. Sometimes our client wanted to browse the Internet while user our system, but since both took up a lot of space on the monitor she was forced to keep only one window open at a time and could not fluidly move back and forth between the two activities. A straightforward solution would be having multiple monitors where different windows could be full-screened or enlarged yet accessible at the same time.
“Designing for spectatorship” was an interesting issue for this specific event because three people were active spectators while one person (our client) interacted with the system. It was difficult for the group members at least to be able to tell where our client was looking, what was confusing, and what was straightforward—essentially, their behaviors and intentions were difficult to capture. A possible solution could be eye and cursor-tracking.
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It sounds like because everybody could communicate with one another, the task went well. It is kind of crazy how doing a simple task could potentially require not one but multiple lap-tops in order to run most efficiently. I agree that it can be hard for a group of people to transition from one activity to another using one display. Everybody works at a different pace, and i think what usually happens is there is one leader who mostly guides everyone else through the project. In Mann library on the second floor there are those huge monitors that you can hook your computer up to in order for groups to edit or work together on a project- maybe that could have been helpful.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree with Christina about Mann library. Those rooms are underused for how cool they are.
ReplyDeleteI've actually had a lot of practice with this for a project I did for a summer internship once. It was to design a UI for Israel Electric for the products that we already built. This required back and forth displays and communicating with them over long distances (I was in Colorado, they were in Israel). Our solution was actually just sharing my desktop view and then teleconferencing. It was rather effective and could help if your group was never actually in the same spot. Plus other users could do some research on the web at the same time or take notes in another medium to help facilitate the process.