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Assignment 1
Project Proposal

Assignment 2
Revised Proposal
Persona Explanation
Personas and Goals
Task Analysis
Interview Questions
Interview Summary

Assignment 3
Task Scenarios
Comp. Analysis
Primary Persona
Initial Designs

Assignment 4
Introduction
Prototype
Methods/Measures
Results/Discussion
Appendices

Presentation #1

Assignment 5
Interactive Prototype
Prototype Overview
Screen Shots
Inter. Scenarios
How to Use It

Assignment 6
Heuristic Evaluation

Assignment 7
Outside HE Update
New "Grid View"

Assignment 8
Introduction
Subjects/Methods
Test Measures
Results
Discussion
Experiment Design
Appendices

Presentation #2

Assignment 9
Overview
Personas/Scenarios
Final Design
Design Evolution
Appendices

Interactive Prototype

Work Distribution

Contact Us
is213-photocat@sims

SIMS 213, Spring 2005

ASSIGNMENT 8: PILOT USABILITY STUDY

Test Subjects and Methods

TEST SUBJECTS

• Subject #1: Assistant restaurant manager, age 36, digital camera user
• Subject #2: SIMS Master's student, age 33, digital camera user
• Subject #3: SIMS PhD student, age 25, digital camera user

Each subject filled out a survey that asked questions about demographics and digital-photo use. More information can be found here: Demographic Survey Summary

We required that our subjects 1) own digital cameras and 2) organize and share their digital photos.

We did not require that our subjects be cameraphone users for this set of tests. As it currently stands, the prototype that we've developed is appropriate for digital photos from both digital cameras and cameraphones.

APPARATUS

We tested our system in the SIMS student lounge in the basement South Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

We held the three testing sessions between 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, 2005. All four of the PhotoCat team members were present for the three tests. Each test lasted approximately 45 minutes.

Subjects tested the PhotoCat system on a PC running Mozilla Firefox with a screen resolution of 1280x1024.

GROUP ROLES

• Mike: Introduced subjects to PhotoCat and handed out consent forms, demographic survey forms, and task lists.
• Andrea: Timed the tasks, observed subject behavior, and debriefed subjects.
• Carrie and Scott: Took notes on what the subjects did and said during the tests

TASKS

Subjects performed the following five tasks during the testing:

We designed the tasks with the following questions in mind:

• Do subjects prefer the bull's eye or the grid view? Or do they prefer different views for different types of tasks?
• What methods do subjects use to change the time range? Our system offers several ways to navigate time. We wanted discover if some ways were easier or more useful than others.
• Did the testers understand the relationship between the menus and buttons in the interface and the elements they controlled? There was some confusion about this during the paper-prototype testing.
• How do subjects attempt to move images from the bull's eye and grid to the bin? There have been questions about whether users prefer to single-click, double-click, or click-and-drag.

After each task, we reset the interface to the default date of February 15, 2005, and default time range of "Week" in the bull's eye view (which is the view that appears when you initially access the prototype). We did this to minimize variability between tasks and subjects. The February 15 date was chosen to place the user near the majority of the example photos in the system.

We included a final task that was more open-ended than the others in order to observe users interacting with PhotoCat in a more free-form manner. We thought that this might elicit behaviors that we might not see during the more goal-directed tasks.

PROCEDURE

Our testing procdures were divided into three parts: Introduction, Task Scenarios, and Debriefing. The text that follows served as our script.

Introduction

Thank you for agreeing to help us test PhotoCat, our class project for IS 213--User Interface Design and Development. Introduce the team members.

PhotoCat is a Web-based photo management system that allows you to view, manage, and share your digital-camera photos.

Within the PhotoCat interface, you can organize your photos by:

• The time they were taken.
• The location where they were taken.
• The people who were present when the photos were taken.

During this testing, you will be interacting with our PhotoCat prototype. You will access PhotoCat using a Web browser.

The PhotoCat interface includes:

• A novel bull's eye view that displays all or some of your photos based on the time they were taken, the location where they were taken, and people who were present when the photos were taken. Display bull's eye view
• A grid view that displays the same photos that you see in bull's view, but arranged into rows and columns. Display grid view
• A set of navigational menus and buttons that allow you to filter and organize the photos being displayed in the interface.
• A photo bin in which you can view and share photos of interest.

We will be asking you to use PhotoCat to perform several photo-management tasks. These tasks will involve finding specific photos in your collection and possibly saving them as groups or sharing them with others. The prototype has been populated with several hundred sample photos, some of which will be used in the tasks.

Please "think out loud" while you perform your tasks, as it will help us understand your interaction with the interface.

You are free to refuse to participate or quit the experiment at any time.

Before we start, we'd like you to read and sign this release that explains more about what this testing is all about. Give the participant a copy of the release for reading and signing.

Task Scenarios

We presented subjects with a sheet of paper listing the tasks (see above for the list of tasks). All subjects performed the same tasks.

Debriefing

After our subjects completed the tasks, we asked them a set of debriefing questions about PhotoCat.