School > INFO 424 > Lab 5
Purpose
In this lab we watched a video on how to make paper prototypes. After that we applied what we learned to a group activity in which we constructed paper prototypes. Once the prototypes had been constructed we practiced using them to look for usability problems
Results
Our group was tasked with creating a paper prototype for a information visualization tool for choosing a TV to buy. We were to use an interface similar to the EZ Chooser discussed in the text, and we found that it was a useful model to follow.
We used bargrams to allow users to pick a brand and type for the TV they were interested in. For other information though, such as price and size, we used sliders to specify maximum and minimum values. As the user interacted with these controls we filtered the available TVs until they found the one they were looking for.
Lessons Learned
One of the things I found interesting about the lab was that one of the most challenging tasks that faced us was trying to get everyone in our group on the same page about our design goals and our proposed solution. This was something we didnt really accomplish well enough, and that ended up causing problems later on in our evaluation. In the future I'll definately need to try to make sure everyone is in agreement before we can move forward.
I'd be interested in more information about how data for prototypes like this ought to be done. Filtering large lists of cars by attributes, especially in any sort of dynamic manner, is not something easily done by people - and definately not in real time. To some extent this problem can be avoided by using smaller data sets than in the final program - but it seems like the test results from using smaller data sets would be less useful because they dont accurately represent the data set the user will be working with in the final product. I'd like it if we could talk about this in the not-to-distant future because it will have an impact in how my group does our visualization project