Part 3 - System Prototype and Brief Evaluation Plan
Authors
Darren
Bircher
William Man
Guy Baxter
Daniel Dunn
Contents
Design
Heuristics and Prototype Examples:
Prototype Design Justifications:
· Reduced
the amount of “menu choices” from seven to four.
· Different
user input methods.
· Enlarge
the device, whilst making it lighter
· Rollover
buttons, text and sound for navigation.
· Addition
of speaker on the interface.
Challenges and Unimplemented Features:
Our task for section three of the assignment
is to implement a detailed prototype of our chosen interface. We selected a
variety of tools to create our prototype, these were: Adobe Photoshop CS2,
Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash. We will also include video clips, screen
dumps and textual descriptions to provide enough information to enable to user
to interact with the prototype. The additional report will document the implementation
and justifications of chosen features. The prototype itself will be given to a
selection of users, all of which will have the opportunity to test the device
and provide feedback; this would then enable us to determine if we have
successfully met the user’s requirements.
The follow quotation was taken from (www.lcrpct.nhs.uk)
and states the current cost of being overweight or obese in the United Kingdom.
“The cost of
obesity across England is estimated at up to £3.7 billion per year, including
£49 million for treating obesity, £1.1 billion for treating the consequences of
obesity, and indirect costs of £1.1 billion for premature death and £1.45
billion for sickness absence. The cost of obesity plus overweight is estimated
at up to £7.4 billion per year. If current trends continue, at least one-third
of adults, one-fifth of boys and one-third of girls will be obese by 2020. The
increasing incidence of obesity has been linked with the increase in diabetes, which
now affects about 3% of the population. Being overweight and carrying a lot of
extra weight is also linked with heart disease, certain types of cancers, joint
problems and asthma.”
The
“tanTastic Health Monitor” prototype has been developed to provide users with
all the information that they would need in order to successfully lose weight
and improve their lifestyles.
To determine the
usability specifications of our prototype, we need to firstly think about the
objectives of the actual design.
The prototype will
have limited functionality compared to what the final outcome would have, but
there will be enough to get the general idea, layout and feel of the finished
product.
Since the prototype
design is a simplified version of the final working version, our prototype
cannot be evaluated by all of the above objectives of the design. This is due
to the prototype requiring almost no back-end functionality. To evaluate the
prototype interface, a different set of criteria will be specified:
These can then be
used to critically evaluate the prototype. The “device functionality” bullet
point refers to the prototype actually being able to show how external controls
to the software (hardware) will interact with the software system.
Although it would be possible to develop every single feature on the
device, given the current situation (of not having to include back-end
information) and the groups lack of programming knowledge we had to limit our
development and primarily focus on the visual development.
The prototype itself was created using Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash,
Adobe Photoshop, Screen Recorder v2.4 and a small amount of JavaScript. The
reason for using these application was because our group had a good amount of
knowledge for computer graphics and designing which meant that we were able to
produce a good, visually appealing prototype.
As stated earlier, because of lack of programming knowledge it was going
to be a hard task to implement all of the back end functionality, however, some
of it has been implemented and the rest has been documented with justifications
as to why it hasn’t been used.
In order to conduct a proper usability evaluation of our prototype we
needed to consider a range of benchmark tasks which would be used to
demonstrate that our prototype functions efficiently and it easy to use.
·
Begin with the device in its “off”
·
Show the startup screen
·
Show the homepage and the ability to
highlight various links
·
Show the ability to select the homepage from
any area of the device
·
Show the ability to view the Message Ease
keypad
·
Show the ability to scroll using either the
arrow keys or the touch-screen pen (cursor)
·
Show that the navigation displays highlighted
areas, text and possibly sound
·
Show that the centre of the directional pad
can be used to select different areas
·
Show that the device can be deactivated
Design
Heuristics and Prototype Examples:
As a group we decided that we needed to abide by certain heuristics to
maintain a user friendly prototype/environment. We decided not only to use
Jakob Neilson’s 10 Usability Heuristics, but to also use the 7 Universal Design
Heuristics. If we could manage to meet as much criteria as possible for both
lists then this would no doubt mean that our device is completely user
friendly.
1. Visibility of system
status
2.
Match between system and the real world
3.
User control and freedom
4.
Consistency and standards
5.
Error prevention
6.
Recognition rather than recall.
7.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
8.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
9.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from
errors
10.
Help and documentation
As stated earlier, we would also base our prototype on as many principles as possible for universal design. Ron Mace suggests that universal design is: “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design”.
The universal design consists of seven principles these are:
-
Below will explain each principle:
-
Guidelines for the 7 Universal Design Heuristics were taken
from, (http://www.ap.buffalo.edu).
After careful consideration and a lot of discussion we decided
on a couple of new features, and to remove some of the previous ones. These
features are;
This
design is much more efficient than the three other designs that were created.
The other designs all included features that would be appropriate for the final
prototype but weren’t as efficient as this one. The only possible outcome for
that situation was to implement various features from the different designs to
create the current prototype. With all of these new implemented features, along
with the removal of the unnecessary features we feel that this device is the
best possible prototype that we could have produced as it caters for a huge
range of disabilities whilst remaining simple to use and aesthetically pleasing.
A number of obstacles arose
whilst implementing this prototype that we hadn’t considered beforehand. One of
these problems was to do with the audio playback; this is because the
application that we had selected to create the prototype didn’t support a
couple of the functions that we required after changing the design. The same
problem occurred for trying to activate video files when certain areas were
visited. These problems were simple enough to overcome but due to poor time
management we weren’t able to implement these features to fullest extent. Two
other problems that we encountered were due to not needing back-end
information. The keyboard was one of these problems; because the prototype was
designed to primarily show the navigation throughout the device there was no
need for user input so instead of implementing the “Message Ease” keyboard onto
the display screen we decided to include it as a separate viewing page but was
still activated using the same method that would have been used had it been
properly implemented. The “Settings” menu within the “Help” screen was not
included for the prototype; this was due to lack of knowledge using the
software package. However, we included a list of the functions that would be
included in the final device. All of these functions would be available because
in the real-world creation because a number of professionals would be employed
to implement these features.
If any of our group members
had been confident programmers then we feel that the majority of these problems
could have been resolved.
Our usability
specifications and an analysis of whether they were met are detailed below:
We have created a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation using screen dumps
to create a simple walkthrough for the end users. We feel that the device is
simple enough to use without the walkthrough, however, it is provided for those
that have poor motor skills and finding it particularly difficult to identify
certain areas without guidance. The presentation is available on our website, www.oocities.org/uclan_hci
within the section “Prototype” and the presentation is labeled “Usability
Presentation”.
Also, we have created a short video demonstration of our device in use
which helps to complete the usability evaluation by showing each benchmark
tasks being accomplished. The video clip is available at www.oocities.org/uclan_hci
within the section “Prototype” and is labeled “Usability Video Demonstration”.
This section of the assignment has proven to be the most difficult that
we have encountered, so far. This is due to us having many implementation
ideas, but lacking programming knowledge so were unable to implement a portion
of them. Overall, our opinions are that the partial functionality that we have
implemented was a success as it allows the user to gain experience of using our
prototype. The sections that we didn’t manage to implement were a slight downside
to the project, however, we are confident that we provided enough functionality
of the device that it isn’t too important about the couple of smaller areas
that were not included.
Jakob Neilson, R L Mack, (1994). “Usability Inspection Methods, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 105-140.
“Combined Public Health Annual Report
2005/06”,
http://www.lcrpct.nhs.uk/site/Internet/AboutThePCT/PublicHealthAnnualReport2006.pdf, 2005 to 2006.
Ron Mace, Accessed 24/02/2007.
“Definition of Universal Design” http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/about_ud/about_ud.htm
Centre for Inclusive Design and
Environmental Access, Accessed on 24/02/2007. “Principles of Universal Design”
http://www.ap.buffalo.edu/~arced/lifespan00/pud/pud1.html