Pukinskis Critique

Howdy,

I have some suggestions based on the Pukinskis set blogs:

* Research is your research findings, not how you did your research.

Ok what’s the difference between research and insights?

Research is what you found and an insight is more of like a course of action, in regards to your design, you will take, based on your research.

A research item could be something like “95% of participants polled, who were Dr. Pepper fans, preferred the color blue” and an insight would be “We should implement blue into our design of Dr. Pepper cans”. Now this may or may not be a good idea, but it is very well documented how I came to that conclusion.

Another way to say it is that research, in terms of a Pukinskis Set, is your findings, not a description of what you did.

Paper Prototypes Design Question

The paper Prototypes are obviously a very powerful tool in our continued reasearch and understanding of our results.

A question I have is will the user actually use the tabs that we have devised for our projct. There are other things that they could do. Perhaps that tabs arnt the best way.

I found that our test subject was warry of using the paper prototype at first and didn’t really understand that he should treat it like a computer screen, he continually asked us questions instead of simply trying to us the interface. When he did us it he totally by passed the tabs and just tried to use the search bar to find what he wanted. This makes sence in retospect. The search bar is the main feature of Google.

So how do we either put our attention into the use of the search bar or move the focuse over to the tabes? thats the question I’m left with after the paper protypes.

Design Question

I wondered after our group designed the paper prototype if what we did would be effective or made the features of Google Maps better.  I expect the paper prototype testing would give our group a better in depth insight to our target users.  I also think the paper prototypes will either confirm or dissolve our predispositions of the design we intend to implement.  The test protocol I think that is most important is the verbal feedback that we record from the users.  This will help to improve our scope of what design and how it effects the user experience as a whole.  If something is too vague or unclear in the opinion of the user then we need to reevaluate our design and tailor it to those user comments.  This will help us understand how our design implementation definitively affects the user’s interaction with the interface.  Also we need to make sure we also do a good job of recording body languauge as well.  This will assist us in seeing how the interface we created affects the user emotionally.  Taking all this into consideration the paper prototype will eventually help us fine tune our design so it will in fact improve the user experience with Google Maps.

Specific Question.

After having conducted a prototype interview, I realized what a powerful tool it is when used correctly. By being used correctly, I mean: identifying tasks that need to be tested; creating sketches that allow users to think critically about the interface; formulating tasks in an unambiguous way; and, finally, taking notes extensively.

As a group, we tried to identify features in Google Maps that could be changed and tasks that could be performed on our proposed interface. Personally, I tried to take as many notes as possible. However, I think that the sketches and task wordings could have been better, but, overall, the prototyping activity was pretty fun and not as hard as I had imagined.

Therefore, there is still room for improvement in our design, which became obvious after the interview (respondent’s confusion with using the interface and the time it took him to complete each task).

Design Question

After completing the process of a paper prototype with an outside user, my view on the design question has changed pretty significantly. I think before hand, I would have leaned more towards that of will our design be something that can easily be implemented. Now, I am more worried about seeing if the changes we want to implement will be user friendly. After doing the paper prototype, it has become more obvious to me that changing a user’s experience on a site can cause some major confusion, even to users who are more ‘tech-savvy.’ After implementing our tab-browsing experience, I have found that changes the wording of features and moving them into new spaces can cause major confusion and require a larger learning curve than I would have expected.

With this, I think we need to reevaluate our current changes and make sure that they are both for the best and easy to conceptualize. If we meet both of these options, then I think we can easily move forward with our changes. We need to make sure that the changes we make are to make the site easier for the user to navigate, and not having the exact opposite effect.

Design Question

Our paper prototype seems to have solved many of the user questions that we have learned to be problematic to our website.  Google Maps although very useful does have its flaws, and by re drawing the interface we have fixed many of them.  My main design question is about our actual interface.  This question is, will adding the side tabbing feature be effective?  Right now the features lack a space along the interface so we decided to add features such as Get Directions, My Maps and others to simplify where certain things might be located.

I feel this will help the users be able to navigate through the site easier and get where they want to go much more efficiently.  There could be problems however because some may think that the tabs are not informative.  However, overtime it will help to see what tabs are used most and what tabs are not.

Design Question

After making our paper prototype I found many questions that could easily be a design question.  Mainly I focused on will the simplicity of our interface increase usability?  As a group we have worked hard and come up with many ideas to try and make it easier to use google maps.  One way we have done this is by combining different ideas into one section of the screen.  This will help users see what they are clicking, and what else they can find that is similar to what they are already looking for.

Having a user friendly site will not only increase the amount of users that use it but also help to keep people wanting to use your site compared to its competitors.  Using google maps vs maps quest now many people still use mapquest.  By highlighting the important features that google maps has that map quest doesn’t we will be able to show why our site is better.

My Design Question

So our goal is to make it easier for users to find directions as well as the not as well known features of Google Maps.  Do our changes actually make it easier for the user to find new features and directions?  Are our design choices instead making it more difficult in certain areas and easier in others?

My hopes are that the tabbed interface we’ve designed aids in revealing some of the hidden areas of Google Maps.  It’s simple, yet it makes a greater number of features far more visible than they were previously.  This is only true if the users actually click on the tabs.

It all comes down to efficiency.  During our paper prototype runs, did the user actually use the tabs?  If not, did it take a long time for them to complete the task without using them?  Is it even possible to complete the task without clicking on the tab?  I believe post-test interviews might be a good way to let the user elaborate on this.  If the user is able to complete a given task, designed to be completed using one of our tabs, without ever using the designated tab we may need to change some things around.

Design Question

One question I have about our groups design is will the tab system really help bring peoples attention to the many features offered by google maps? It could be argued that, no it will not because people won’t see them right away because they are hidden behind the tabs, but I feel that the system will work since in order to do anything with the site the user will have to click on a tab, therefore revealing the many features available in that category.

I feel that our paper prototype study will reveal the answer to this question. Simply observing and noting how people navigate the paper prototype will tell us how effective the tab system is at bringing recognition to the features available in google maps. By asking the user to complete several tasks that use these special features we will be able accurately evaluate the tab system we put in place. I feel that the paper prototype will be a huge benefit in our research into altering google maps.

Design Question

Will our changes allow easier access to the features that are more or less “hidden” within Google Maps?  As it stands now Google Maps is something of a blank page starting out and most seem to miss out on its features.  By adding a tabbed structure to the site we hope to introduce them to these features.  To that end we asked them to navigate through tasks that, ideally, would have made them choose to use those tabs instead of the normal structure.  To an extent I would say that it succeeds but we might need to make a few changes as some of the choices we have made seem to be confusing to the user and at times the tasks we set forth were done through methods not involving our addition to the site’s design.  There might even be too much we are trying to add with this tabbed structure at once, that is something to discuss. 

While we did put some features in the light a little more we also cloud the picture up a bit as well.  So yes, our changes to bring out the “hidden” features but it is only the first iteration and it can be done better.