EECE418 Project Pass 1 -

Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough and Design Recommendations

 

Team 2: Portable Digital Photo Album

I. Team

Name

Leung, Wilson

Siu, Nelson

Yiu, Chung Man (Charles)

Ziraknejad, Nima

COGNITIVE WALKTHROUGH

II. Summary of Hypothetical User Tasks or Goals Analyzed

 

Hypothetical Task: Users would like to view and organize their photos or search for a specific set of photos in their archive.

Typical User: We are targeting general users of photography, and expect users to be familiar with organizing and using real physical photo albums.

 

III. Analysis Results

 

A tabular presentation of the cognitive walkthrough is available here.

IV. Identification of problem points

 

1. Different gestures for possible actions in:

Figure 1, Node B
Figure 1, Node C
Figure 2, Node E
Figure 2, Node C
Figure 3, Node B
Figure 3, Node E
Figure 3, Node C

N/F = Node, Figure X, Y
In N/F B, 1 the user will be faced with a timeline that zooming in and out needs right/left gestures. Even if the action is clear for the user, selecting that specific region to zoom in is not clear because each person has his/her own idea about the amount of time on that timeline. Sometimes the up/down gesture or clicking on that region renders better imagination of the zoom in/out in user’s mind. Maybe just adding a rectangular movable bar on the timeline can give better idea of zooming to the user. Also on the screen there should be a message to identify the possibility of zooming on that timeline to notify the possibility of zooming in that screen.


In N/F C, 1 the user should do the right gesture to go to next pictures same as left gesture for the previous pictures. In the sense of turning the album leafs over, left gesture brings better imagination for the next picture same as right gesture for previous picture.


In N/F E, C, 2 and N/F E, C, 3, the ambiguity of the up gesture can confuse the user and he/she can ask that why I should do up gesture to come back to the current album that I was before?


In N/F B, 3 to add a photo to the new album, how the user should know that immediately after touching the screen while doing the right gesture, the photo will be placed in the new album? In this case the user should add the pictures one by one and there is no possibility to add more than one picture at a time!

2. Proposed zoom in and zoom out functions in:

Figure 1, Node B
Figure 3, Node B

Sometimes clicking on some part of a picture that the user wants to zoom in/out, brings better imagination than any right/left gesture. Because zooming in/out is dealing with depth or perspective of user’s view but right/left movement doesn’t.

3. Double tap/clicking actions in:

Figure 1, Node B
Figure 2, Node D
Figure 2, Node E
Figure 3, Node D
Figure 3, Node E

In all above nodes the user should do double clicking to achieve to the defined goals, but can just single do the job? How the user should know that sometimes to press a button the action is single click while to select or fullscreen action he/she should do double click? As a problem the user will be confused to do the proper action such as single or double clicking.

4. In figure 6 which is the start point for user, there is no evidence for adding a new album! The user should know by him/herself to go to Album view to create a new album! So the Main view of the photo album does not show the whole purpose of the digital photo album.

5. In figure 8, when the user wants to add the pictures to a new album, how the user can select several pictures and then add all of them together to the album? Again here a simple “Add selected photos” button can do the job instead of several actions done by user’s finger (gesture).


6. In figure 8, sometimes the user needs to have better and larger view of the picture that he/she wants to add, but there is no fullscreen view in this figure!

DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS

I. Problem Summary:

 

There were 3 categories of problems noted by the evaluators from the heuristic analysis and from the team’s own cognitive walkthrough.

1. Deficiencies in System Navigation

a. Users identified the ambiguities associated with identifying what functions were represented by the two selections on the main menu: Timeline View, and Album View. Users did not associate the timeline with a tool for photo searching, and some entered into the album view to search for photos one album at a time (the reason for creating the timeline view).

b. Users had trouble identifying the use of the right and left gestures when specifying zoom in and undo zoom in the timeline view. There were no visual hints or targets to suggest these were the appropriate actions for the tasks.

c. User had doubts regarding the scope of the timeline view. They were not able to confidently say that the timeline contained all photos from the devices for all times.

d. Several buttons for key modes were missing, resulting in users failing to accomplish their goals (i.e. Create New Album, Exit Photo Add Mode)

2. Deficiencies with Capability and Function Recognition

a. Users found the “up” gesture a point of confusion from a consistency point of view. The “up” gesture serves as both the mechanism for zooming out in the timeline view, while doubling as the escape for the photo fullscreen view.

b. Users were not able to group the “up” gesture as similar to the left and right gestures (which were found to be natural in keeping with the photo album metaphor). The “up” gesture was said to be awkward, difficult to execute, and not naturally recognized without explicit instructions.

3. Deficiencies with Status Recognition


a. Users were disoriented when viewing photos chronologically in fullscreen view. There was no feedback as to the relative temporal location of the current photo to all others. Users were not sure whether they were moving forward in time or back.

b. Users found the photo selection phase of the picture adding process to be confusing when the timeline was used as the mechanism of photo addition and navigation.

II. Proposed Design Revisions:

Our team’s proposed changes to our photo album can be broken down into 3 categories:

1. Navigational improvements

a.Timeline Related
i . The timeline will have a slide bar that rides on the line to indicate the consequence of zoom in operations. Clicking on the bar will zoom in to the time section as indicated by the length of the bar. The bar is adjustable via the same right gesture as before, with the bar adjusting to the drag or via holding onto the ends of the bar and sliding.

ii . A dedicated zoom out button will be added to give users a clear undo path for all zoom in actions. The zoom out will be centered on the middle of the current time period zoom.

iii. The “Timeline View” title will be renamed “Photo Search” to better reflect its true intended usage.

iv. Other photo searching methods will be added (e.g. by file name, or by an explicit time period as an alternative to the timeline)

b.Gesture Related
i . The direction of the gestures will be changed to better mirror the photo album metaphor. To proceed forward in time, the left gesture will be used, and the right gesture used for moving back chronologically. This is analogous to flipping the pages in a real album.

ii. The “up” gesture will be eliminated. Visible buttons will replace any functions previously represented by the gesture.

c. Fullscreen mode related
i . An exit from fullscreen mode button will be added to give users an exit path from the fullscreen photo-viewing mode.

2. System Status Improvements

a.A small picture date display will be added to the fullscreen mode to show users which direction in time they are navigating when flipping through a large number of photos with gestures.

b. In each major mode of operation, the current mode will be displayed to the user. This is designed to eliminate any possible discrepancies between the operation the system is in and the operations the user expects to be able to perform. For example, in the photo adding mode, the interface will clearly display “Photo Add to Album” to indicate to the user the system is awaiting selection of photos for an album.



 

~End of Report~

 

Last edited on May 9, 2004 4:38 AM