Friday, April 18, 2008

Final Project: Design for UX VIII

Phase 3c: Design (Hifi proto, heuristic & user testing)

We had to rush our hifi out by weekend, so that we could be able to do our heuristic and user testing. However, as murphy's law (not really ah, just that we wanted to do a realistic hifi proto), we had to spent much time on doing the asethetics out. We also had to change some of the layout.

We knew then, that we are not able to complete a "complete" hifi flash proto. Thus, we did a static version, but with graphics that are as close as our intended version. Below is what we came out with, the 1st draft of hifi proto. As we only have time for one evaluation (prep and execute), we chose to conduct heuristic evaluation + (4 targetted personas, 2 advance 2 novice) 1st, and snowball user testing to the next week (blessing in disguise will explain in design 4)



We based our evaluation on Jakob Nielson's model - the 10 heuristics


Heuristic 2: "Match between system and the real world"

one pointed out that the information button "2nd button on the navi bar" as shown above, is somewhat conflicting the 1st button. Both terms are widely used and understood as the "same meaning". Therefore, we decided to change it to "Carparks", as it was meant for the viewing of carpark information.


Heuristic 8: Asethetics & minimalistic design

Negatives

This heuristic gave us much problems, in my opinion. As we wanted to venture into providing a better UX, and really wanna find out whether a slightly more animated and graphics based website can give that. But based on feedback, it wasnt what we expected.
It was too graphics intensive, and the usage of different cars on different page, was distracting. I think that we went a bit overboard, and it was a good reality check for us, the designers. This gives us a very good platform to gauge what we will be churning out for our 2nd version (flash based)

Positives

However, all is not lost. They are able to spot the consistency of colors used, our corporate colors, black red white. That helped saved us from "failing" of this heuristic, heh.


Heuristic 9 & 10: Help users and help documentation

We knew that our website might potentially need some "adapting to" by some users, and its not exactly the most "user friendly" site, esp for first time users. Even for IPOD, which is a simple design, you do suffer a bit during the initial use, such as browsing us the wheel and thumb, the organising of cateogries etc. Therefore, we placed the HELP button quite prominently (the 4th button). This is to aid users that might potentially stuck while using (that's the extreme case).
The testers knew where the HELP button was, which was good. But they cant test it, as there wasnt much "errors" to be occured in this draft version. But, it was a good feedback anyway.


The next deliverable (final one) is the 2nd version of hifi proto, user evaluation and UX evaluation)

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