Week 7 Entry: 13/9/14

Paper Prototype:

In human–computer interaction, paper prototyping is a widely used method in the user-centered design process, a process that helps developers to create software that meets the user's expectations and needs—in this case, especially for designing and testing user interfaces. It is throwaway prototyping and involves creating rough, even hand-sketched, drawings of an interface to use as prototypes, or models, of a design. While paper prototyping seems simple, this method of usability testing can provide a great deal of useful feedback which will result in the design of better products.

                                                                  (wikipedia)

This week in the contact we had to present a prototype so I called the meeting to figure out an effect way of building a paper prototype that can be used by the users to perform a series of tasks.

It was a bit of challenge at first because we had to make the prototype in a way that user can interact with it without any instructions as if they are there alone with the website and performing the task. Their feedback was very important as it was the very reason we had to build the prototype.

But after a few brainstorming sessions we had a rough idea what we wanted and we allocated subtasks to each member to perform. And we made the prototype.

Next day During the testing session we split our team in two groups for the first round where Kenny and Kartik went to test other team prototypes, while Khalfan and myself stayed in the group with our prototype to take their feed back. Then we swapped groups for the second round. 

Images of the paper prototype:

1. Shows the hotspots of the bushfire incidents happend in 1950.

2. User clicked on one of the hotspots a box will pop-up showing some text and a picture

3. This page shows the articles of the droughts incidents happened in 1950. As the user scrolled down the page, more articles will be shown, if applicable

USER FEEDBACK:

In terms of feedback, the most useful feedback was as following:

·                     Size of Hotspots should signifies something.

·                     A new tab to view the complete article.

·                     Auto-correct if searched for an invalid location.

·                     Allow multi-selection of different types of natural disasters.

The less useful feedback was as following:

·                     Increase the year range from 10 years to 20 years.

·                     Show hovering functionality when in hotspots.

·                     A new tab that will take users to trove.