This project was part of my coursework for CMSC434: Human-Computer Interaction (Spring 2018) taught by Professor Evan Golub. The goal of the project was to give students hands-on experience with various stages in the design process and experiment with topics covered in class. This project was done in collaboration with Bismah Amin, Lauren Seidleck, and Maria Suplee.
Skills Used & Gained
- Paper/Low-fidelity prototyping
- Android development
- User studies & testing
- Iterative Design Process
Phase 1: Task/User-Centered Design and Prototyping
Phase 1.1 – Initial Pitch
While flipping through to-do lists and calendar pages full of obligations, it is all too easy to lose sight of yourself. What skills do you want to develop to be a better version of yourself? What is the passion project you have always wished you could do but never even started? Every day we are persistently bombarded by a seemly endless myriad of tasks from various aspects of life. Trying to juggle a career and a family and still have time for a social life is harder than it has ever been before. But it doesn’t have to be. Imagine a world where your schedule is dynamically adaptable and readily accessible. Imagine if you could not only share your calendar with others, but sync it. With Life Calendar, all of that is possible, and that’s only the beginning. Life Calendar is so much more than your average calendar.
Life Calendar is an application that allows individuals manage their day to day tasks as well as their personal long term and short term goals without feeling overwhelmed. The application follows the format of a calendar but allows you to schedule in important meetings and appointments in a user friendly way by using visualization aids and personalized color coding. It will also allow the user to set up goals, whether they are planned for days or for years. Life Calendar will feature a “panic button” to walk you through a task reorganization when you feel overwhelmed. It will limit distractions by having a social media timer and a visual break-down of your tasks or behaviors of the past week.
There are three main goals at the heart of Life Calendar. First, it will help maintain a work-life balance. The application will allow individuals to keep track of not only their work meetings, but also new hobbies they might want to take up and remind them to continue pursuing their personal goals. Secondly, Life Calendar aims to remind the user to of their daily schedule in a way that is realistic and persistent. It will provide a users with notifications of their daily small goals that will lead to them achieving a larger goal which will prevent users from feeling overwhelmed. Lastly, Life Calendar aspires to promote user productivity and self-care. The application wants the user to take on new challenges and progress on new hobbies. Life Calendar will allow users to manage their goals and aspirations and get a better understanding on what works best for them.
There are various audiences that could benefit from Life Calendar. One key group is college students, who often have a job, keep up with classes, and are involved on campus. This is a heavy load to keep up with, and they often have other goals they want to accomplish while they are still young and do not have all the pressures of “real adult life.” Another potential audience is parents. Not only do they have commitments to their careers, they have obligations to their family from attending little league games to buying groceries. Many parents feel like they end up devoting spare time to their children, and do not do many things for themselves. Life Calendar will help the heads of families put aside some time for themselves and continue personal growth as they age. One final key group that could be considered are people who struggle with mental illness. Mental illness can make day-to-day tasks more difficult to complete. The same features that might remind a college student to practice learning a language or playing an instrument could remind someone with a mental illness to shower or write in a journal. It is a way to create more organization and structure to their lives.
Phase 1.2 – Task Scenarios
Task Scenario #1: A mother of two set a New Year’s resolution to learn how to knit for fun, but needs to make sure her family to-do list is prioritized over her crafting progress over other fun personal activities. She might also want to find a set of time she has available to take a class at a local craft store.
This scenario was influenced by a family friend of mine. While she loves knitting and crocheting, she still has to balance her work and caring for her children. Not to mention she still likes going out to eat and going to the movies with friends. Families, especially parents, are stake-holders who could greatly benefit from our application. She mentally knows what she wants to prioritize in her life, but it can be difficult to actually implement this ordering in the heat of the moment. Life Calendar should be a practical way to turn her rankings into reality, showing off the prioritization features of the application.
Task Scenario #2: A UMD student loves working out, and sets many personal fitness goals for himself regarding weightlifting and overall health. However, one day while deadlifting he accidentally injures his back. The students now wants to set recovery/physical therapy benchmarks, while keeping his long term fitness goals.
This scenario was inspired by a friend at UMD who experienced a similar injury experience. He had a difficult time recovering because he was unsure of how to change his routine and still keep the body he wanted. College students are one of the first stake-holder groups we had considered. This task relates to how users can set goals within multiple time frames, as well as how they may want to modify, save, or reschedule goals. Life is often unpredictable, so our application must be flexible and easy to edit.
Task Scenario #3: A single parent is unable to take her child to school due to work constraints. She needs a way to connect with other parents near her that are going to the school at the same time as her child so she can become part of a carpool.
This scenario came about when we were brainstorming potential time constraints that may act as deterrents for users. In this situation, the woman’s work schedule prevents her from being able to accomplish a task. Most people can’t afford to cut back on their work hours to accommodate other obligations, even if they want to. Finding different means besides simply rescheduling to help her achieve her goals is important here.
Task Scenario #4: A UMD student wants to become a part time Uber driver to earn some extra cash. He wants to make sure he does not fall behind in school, so has decided to drive for Uber only 10% of every day Monday-Friday, but 50% of his day Saturday and Sunday and needs a way to budget and schedule this time.
This scenario came from chatting with friends about their personal obligations. Finding ways to gain supplementary income is appealing to many within a wide range of financial constraints. Being able to see the “forecast” of his academic commitments far in advance might help him figure out how many hours a week he can dedicate to his side project, and allow it to change dynamically if the situation calls for it. The ability to have a set schedule while allowing for last-minute rearrangements could be helpful to a wide variety of users with irregular day-to-day activities.
Phase 1.3 – Low Fidelity Prototypes
Phase 2: Project Refinement and Medium-Fidelity Prototyping
Phase 2.1 – Creating a Game Plan for Medium-Fidelity Prototyping
Phase 2.2 – Implement an Interactive Prototype
Phase 3: Peer Evaluation, Concept & Prototype Presentation
Phase 3.1 – Present Prototype to Class
Phase 3.2 – Evaluate Another Group’s Design & Plan Own User Study
User Study Design & Pilot
Part 3: User Study Design
Techniques
For this user study, our team will be gathering user feedback by direct observation and query. We will be conducting feedback sessions by asking users to engage in think-aloud activities and constructive interaction with other users in the study. So users are not completely lost, we will inform them that the app is to support wellness. They will have an open-ended task to find a health suggestion they would both like to do. By pairing two novice users together, it will simulate how many real life users may have a workout buddy or diet partner they want to plan with. It will also reveal workflow weaknesses in the app if two people together cannot figure out what to do. Additionally, many college students (our main user testing base) have never done a usability study and may not feel comfortable addressing the person running the study directly.
After they have completed their interactive portion of the study, we will be interviewing the users together about what they thought about our app. We will ask them a series of questions, and then have them categorize their thoughts into positives, negatives, and design ideas. Their comments during the interactive portions will also be categorized into these sections after the trial is complete, in case a user accidentally ignores an earlier issue they had. This is common with technology, as many users will blame themselves before they blame the design of the application. We will use their responses for further evaluation of the Swellness App for Team Health01. All parts of the study will be video recorded for our records. The recordings will help us review the users’ exact opinions. It can also help us review how they follow a workflow through the app, since the interaction is more open ended.
One limitation on our study is that we do not have Android devices available for our testing purposes, so our users will be performing their evaluations on an emulator. We understand that this does not offer the same feel as holding a device in a user’s hand, but hopefully in future iterations of prototyping this could be incorporated. We know many interactions will feel different on the computer versus the phone/tablet, so some feedback may not be relevant. However, even on the emulator we can get early feedback on the overall design and see how a user navigates through the app.
Scripts
Hello [users’ names], thanks for taking the time to be a part of our study! Before we get started, let me give you a brief rundown of what we’ll be doing today. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too crazy — we’re interested in seeing if our app is intuitive and user-friendly. You literally can’t do anything wrong here! This app is designed to help you find new and better ways to improve your health.
With that being said, we’d like you to simply navigate around our app and interact with any features that seem interesting to you. Feel free to click on anything you’d like. We won’t be answering questions directly, but feel free to voice any comments or questions while you’re working. You two will be working as a pair, and you are free to discuss anything you find confusing while playing around. For now, the only user on the app has the username “cmsc434” with all the letters lowercase, and the password “test,” once again all lowercase letters. So have fun, and get started whenever you feel ready!
Interview Questions (don’t have to ask all, try to follow flow of conversation):
- Do you have any initial thoughts or questions after playing with the app?
- What was your favorite part about the app?
- What was your least favorite part about the app?
- What sort of suggestions did you expect from the app? Did it meet your expectations?
- What suggestion did you and your partner agree on? How well does it reflect your real life health goals?
- Could you see yourself using this app? If so, why? If not, how come?
- Did the app layout make sense to you? How did the color scheme make you feel?
- What feelings or sensations did you have while navigating between pages?
- If you could change one thing about the app, what would it be and why?
Consent Form:
I, _________, agree to participate in this user study. I acknowledge that my comments and responses may be used by the Health01 team for analysis and future iterations of the application, and that personal information such as my age and occupation may be recorded as part of the study. I agree to have my session video recorded for use by the researchers to edit and improve the Swellness application.
Extra Credit: User Study Results
* These are a cleaned up form of my original notes (I categorized as they spoke and by rewatching the video as per the techniques). I do have the video footage on my phone but I want to protect the privacy of the users I asked to complete the study. – Rachel
| USER: | POSITIVES: | NEGATIVES: | DESIGN IDEAS: |
| N – UMD Sophomore Undergraduate Biochemistry Major | – Login is kind of tacky, but I liked the colors- Likes how you can favorite health tasks to do- Might want to give feedback to the Contact Us page, likes reporting bugs, etc. | – Login page messed up- Doesn’t like inconsistent photos (especially background colors)- Thought it was hard to find settings – Small text! Too hard to read- Wanted the bottom bar to stay even when you click on the suggestion | – “I had only Chipotle yesterday and I only had Korean Barbeque today, maybe I need actual reminders”- I would rather search than have channels, I wouldn’t think like the categories- Put the help button on the main page if the user is confused |
| M – UMD Sophomore Undergraduate Computer Science Major | – Good color scheme- Liked the channels for finding information- Got excited when I mentioned FitBit data could be integrated in the future- Liked placement of the settings information | – Login button is in the way- I personally would not use the app, I don’t know if it would be useful- Feels like information you could get online but less direct- No feedback from the contact page (no sign it submitted) | – Let you add health data, like medical conditions to help you find appropriate information- Would want to share advice with other users |
| K – UMD Sophomore Undergraduate Math Major | – Looks like the old Facebook app (simple, blue and white)- Sees how it could be useful for someone less knowledgeable on health- Icons are good cues but would like standardization | – I can’t get to the login because of the button- Some parts of the layout really annoyed him, something about layout suggestions- Super small text, seems like it would be bad for accessibility | – Search for things in addition to the channels |
| J – UMD Sophomore Undergraduate Computer Science Major | – Better than just a website- Categories were helpful for sorting- Liked the image preview for the suggestions- Well done considering the difficulties of using Java | – Login button in the way- Confused on what I can actually do in the app on the main screen-Frustrated that clicking on suggestion did not get more information | – Use a format sort of like Reddit so you can see workout videos, get more information- Also like Reddit, have users post their own content |
Extra Credit: Reflections on the Study
The most useful part of the study was the open-endedness. Users liked exploring and figuring out what the app was capable of. They had a natural curiosity to investigate all the different features of the app. Without any prompting, they were able to describe various task scenarios of the app. Overall, the users felt that moving through the app was not bad, especially liking the bottom navigation bar and the general idea of the suggestions. They also had a lot of exciting new directions that they could see the app going in. Some features they stayed neutral on because they could not see the functionality.
The study was successful in demonstrating the workflow of the user. After logging in, their first action would to scroll through the main page and then click a random suggestion. After that, they would see if you could favorite the suggestion. Seeing the home screen, they would then check out one of the channels. After more playing around, then they would see the hamburger icon and test out the settings. First, most would go to Profile, then Help, and then the rest varies greatly.
The least useful part of the study was the pair experience. In both studies, one user of the two took the lead on navigating through the app. This would then result in them doing more and having more feedback, while the other user would take the back seat. Also, since the pairs I used were friends with each other, they often got each other distracted. For example, in the second trial when J mentioned the Reddit design idea, they got into a conversation about sub-Reddits and posts they had seen today that were semi-fitness related. Also, disagreements on Likes/Dislikes could lead to arguments and a lot of bickering between partners.
In the future, the partnerships would work better if there was one experienced and one novice user. Otherwise, it might be better to let the user navigate on their own and give their own individual feedback. Also, surveys or rating systems (such as 1-10) may be a better way to gage how much a user liked or disliked specific app features. Open-ended exploration was interesting as a preliminary study, but future iterations with a more full prototype might benefit from specific task scenarios to complete.
The main things the user testers want to see fixed are cosmetic changes. This includes fixing the login button, increasing text size, keeping the bottom bar at all times, and standardizing the images for the suggestions. The next set of features they would like to be implemented include favoriting stars, feedback from submitting Contact Us, and at least hardcoded profile information.
Rachel Walter 