Human-Computer Interaction @ IU

agraft — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:43:34 +0000

That looks really good. Looks like you have something good going .

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Pukinskis set Critique

lynndombrowski — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:06:43 +0000

Suggestions:
Greets, please note these do not apply to everyone, but are ideas for some to keep in mind:
If you didn’t get a 2/2 for the Pukinskis / Principle blog, check this list, you probably missed one of the following:
When doing a Pukinskis Set, you need to have either multiple research items and/or insights to help you produce the final part: the concepts.
Research is your research findings, not how you did your research.
Concepts should be interface driven, not technology driven. You’re looking to help people, if you create an algorithm to help people that’s great, but you must first explain why its people centered.
You needed to use a Pukinskis set.

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Design question

agraft — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:43:51 +0000

The question that I have for our design is how easily will people learn these new features. I hope that I will be able to see how easily or difficult our tasks are that we set out. I feel that these tasks will indeed be easy for everyone to use. Our prototypes I hope will prove to put us in the right direction for designing another prototype.

After doing the research, I found that these new features are very learnable. The changes that we are making are very simple, and even the most novice computer user can understand how to use our changes to Searchme.com. I really believe that we are in the right direction on our first prototype and our next should go on the same direction as the current one.

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Prototype Question

fdibart — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:55:37 +0000

Will our prototype make it easier and more enjoyable for people to use searchme.com?

The site is currently designed in a way that makes many of the features hidden or not easily accessed. We took a lot of suggestions from interviews and popular features from other search engines. We liked the basic idea behind searchme.com and decided to keep the visual search and the coverflow ideas. Around these central concepts we streamlined certain options to make them more intuitive and made other features more prominent in the design.

I think the changes we made will really help the site be more usable though the test results will show wether they helped or not.

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I want you all to know that I seriously considered writing my entire post in this space and using the post body for the title.

jpanovic — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:21:44 +0000

We’re trying to do a lot with our revamp of searchme.com, but I think in the end our goal is not so much to improve upon the original site but rather to design what we think it should have been in the first place. We’ve used the ideas of the original but we haven’t really used it as a base to be improved upon. So my question is, have we built a site that is not better than the current searchme.com, but one that is, by the standards of the market and users today, a good and usable search engine that features a visual representation of results. This is something that we as a group feel that Searchme.com does not provide, and competing with big guns like Google or, umm, well competing with a big player like Google with an already well established market share is no short order. In fact the scale of this task is such that I don’t expect us to finish before the semester ends. Yeah, we’ll refine the design and get closer to the final result but for something like this I’m not sure we have to time to reach that point where enough is enough and we call it good.

The testing will help us refine what we have to offer and get closer to our goal of something that can split the search market into text and visual, and closer to being not only the best visual search site but a serious competitor to Google, but to the point where Google has to work to break into some of our market. There just isn’t time for us to design such a thing and getting it running is well beyond the scope of what we’re doing here, but I think with all the ideas and possibilities we have running around the product we end up with will be great but not the end. All the testing is going to do is tell us what doesn’t work and give us ideas for new things.

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The Obvious Question

ejwalden — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:45:24 +0000

I think the obvious question, which has already been stated in the previous posts, is will our changes to the interface help make the site easier to navigate. I think this answer should be obvious too. Ofcourse we should be able to make beneficial changes to the interface. We are specifically looking at what we found, through interviews, of what was good and bad about the site as it is now. Correcting the issues we found should lead to a more successful website. We are using a combination of already successful websites and applications to improve SearchMe.com. Our group as a whole liked to idea of SearchMe.com and did not want to stray away from the original idea, so instead we just updated it by adding influences from other search engines, primarily Google.

Though we believe that our additions and updates of the website will be successful, we have tested and will be testing more the prototype we created to make sure that everything runs smooth.

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Week 12 – Paper Prototype Question

wfalotico — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:41:05 +0000

Our paper prototype was designed around the idea that searchme.com has a cluttered hard to navigate layout which hides alot of very useful features. So my question is did our groups’ redesign of the layout of searchme.com help users find what they are looking for in a easier and more pleasing way?

The way the site is curently designed it is very unclear where are the features that make the site unique are. For example, in order to view the magnifying glass to enlarge a visual snapshot of a search result the user would need to hover over the picture until a screen pops up. Then they would have to find the magnifying glass (a tiny button near the top of the pop up without a text caption). We simplified this by creating a drag window would could be moved to increace the size of the pictures and decrease the size of the text, and vice versa.

My making things clearly labled and reducing clutter we believe our design is as simple and effective as visual search can be. We will find out how our users felt on Tuesday when we analyze our paper prototypes in class.

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Design Question

jkasting — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:54:43 +0000

Is our work going to actually help anything? That’s my biggest question about our design. We’ve modified a few little things, added some text results, and moved a couple of things around; but is it going to make the site any better or easier to use? I hope so. I think we have some good ideas. Unfortunately whenever something new is designed and used, there is some learning which must take place. Searchme.com and it’s graphical results is something that will have to require some learning. The goal of our project is to minimize the amount of learning and exploration of site that is needed before the user can do and find what they want. Our prototypes should help deliver an answer to these questions.

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I Like Being Redundant in my Redundant Posts, Which Just So Happen to Have Long Titles By Pure Coincidence

johnsong — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:44:39 +0000

So, my main question is going to (most likely) be the same as everyone else’s. “Will our prototype be easier to use in the end for said user?” I think that the answer will be “yes.” However, I am an optimist by nature, and potentially a pathological liar (this only applies to this post only).

My reason for being hopeful for our project is that we are applying something of the semi-familiar, and using Searchme.com’s original UI tactics where they are appropriate. That being said, I should hope to learn a few failures in the design as well; hopefully none too large, or point out that the flaw is our design as a whole. If we discover zero flaws, I will be disappointed. That “what if” (implying failure of a design not spotted by our test subjects) will continue to meander in my head.

I feel that we will get a mixture of both win and fail, but with the fail being of the minor sort. This false-perception of interaction with our subjects while tag-teaming as “God” will certainly be highly beneficial.

So… hope for the best?

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Blog Topic?

jkasting — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:22:03 +0000

What are we supposed to write about?

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