Another wave of four evaluation sessions finished. The full document with more detailed observations can be grabbed from here. The video of the third session is also available below (click on HD for higher quality):
The biggest findings in the third testing cycle included the following:
- State and Idea controllers. In this iteration, users have become less informed as to how to create new states and ideas. The footer has decreased the visibility of the actionable instructions (holding X or Z) which users found more difficult to identify. Once pointed to the HOLD interactions, users were able to create and edit states and ideas. A second problem for states was that the state switching buttons still were not differentiate enough in terms of their selected and unselected states.
- Experience Threads. Most users really felt the feature was interesting; however there were a few problems. For one, after completing a thread, users felt a need for closure and to play back or test a created thread – a feature which was missing. Secondly, users had some hard time finding the “snapshot” tool which was hidden under a sub menu. Thirdly, conceptually, experience threads felt to users as if they were bigger than the existing tools, and should be brought out more into a separate position or location. Fourthly, due to a lack of feedback, users did not really know in which thread they were currently in.
- Selection. Any currently selected item that is selected has diminished visually. As a result of not knowing clearly what is selected, more users have deleted items unexpectedly as well as tried selecting items which were already selected. The visual indication of currently selected items (and its sub child items) should be made stronger.
- Instance and Master. Even though now the master edit mode requires an explicit toggle, some users still expressed confusion as to which edit mode they were actually in. A stronger indication is required in the next iteration. After the introduction of this explicit Master Edit Mode, users still expressed a need to get out of this mode in with more certainty that their changes were being saved.
- Inheritance. Although the idea of inheritance was understood by users. To most it was still not identified and required guidance to be actually found.
- Auto grouping. Most users understand the parent – child relationship (“drawing inside” feature), however they do not know how to adjust or change that relationship. For example, users expressed the desire to move an object into a different object (thus changing the
Thanks to Avi, Dana, Verne and Mehdi for participating!
