This week we looked at the process of iterative evaluation. The focus was on constant evaluation through all development stages of user centred design. This process is tied in with early ideas being prototyped, tested and evaluated, improved, prototyped some more, evaluated, etc. In doing so the process hopes to increase functionality, usability & user experience, and to debug problems at an early stage as possible. This of course leads to a better product. We were told that in industry most times engineers fail to follow an iterative process. Only evaluating after the product is complete and then shipping the product regardless of the result. This leads to a bad product that suffers from loads of usability issues, produces a bad experience and loses the company profit. I'm amazed that the corporate world can be so irrational at times, but then that’s bureaucratic company politics for you.
The iterative evaluation process forms a main part of our Traveline client projects. Earlier in the week our group had another meeting to work out the next set of actions. We needed to work out the requirements in order to focus the user tasks in an appropriate way. After a brain storming session we decided that we would try and build the requirements from the perspective of a Traveline user. What would a user want from the website? They would need to know the travel times in an understandable format, the cost of the journey (this was a big area of debate in the group, but we finally agreed that clearly that if price info was not shown, users would go elsewhere), the reliability and convenience of the travel routes, and finally an encouragement to choose public over private transport. These requirements would form the basis for designing the user tasks. In the next meeting we aim to finalise the scenarios under which users will be tested, which will be conducted using a combination of screen readers and telephone interviews (pre and post task). There was talk in the group today after the seminar that we might look into filming people’s faces using web cams to capture emotions; but I’m not convinced that it will provide particularly useful data given our lack of knowledge in facial expression psychology. Also whilst user experience is important, I believe we should be aiming for a quick and efficient experience over a fun one mostly. People don’t use travel sites for fun, they want info quickly and reliably. Anyway more updates on the project process next blog.
With academia aside, I thought seeing as this is a blog I might have a quick rant on the mobile phone upgrade I got a couple of weeks ago; the Nokia N78. I got it because it had internet and mp3 mainly. But the usability is terrible. Firstly the processor is not powerful enough to run the operating system properly, leading to slow feedback times when buttons are pressed and ultimately to a bad experience. Secondly the mp3 software is badly designed. There’s no option anywhere to move quickly between the play/pause screen and other phone functions, meaning that everytime you want to change track you have to navigate through about 5 pages (multiplied by the slow screen loading). To make things worse there isn't a play/pause or skip track button on the phone. So the phone has mp3 functionality, but it’s a nightmare to use and so rates very low on usability. Thirdly the internet is slow and charges you per MB usage. Also with no QWERTY keyboard, typing web addresses is a nightmare. Also the designers put a shortcut key to Vodafone live on the main page which can easily be pushed accidently leading to a connection to the web that charges you. Obviously this can be changed but whys it there in the first place! Just to round it all off, I was excited that it supported GPS. But of course you had to download the software separately (another charge) and then pay a subscription. All in all a bad user experience and the reason why I will be trading it in for a G1 android, which I hear great things about. That’s less money for Nokia due to bad user design!
It’s interesting to note that it wasn't till I'd lived with the phone for about a week that I properly noticed all of this and formed my negative opinion. I think you really have to understand what it's like to live with a piece of technology on a day to day basis, before you can form a proper opinion. Maybe this is something user centred designers should seriously take into account in their user testing for certain devices. Jeff Hawkin founder of the company PalmPilot for example carved up a prototype of the first PalmPilot to the dimensions of a real one and carried it around with him to see if he could live with it. This prototyping (as well as others of course) led to an incredibly successful product.
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