Heeding advice from lecture notes and hints from Mr. Reddy that he would prefer something more surprising and unique, we decided to go ahead with our ‘risk’, attempting to create a unique UX that’s true to our theme rather than following classics/popular styles that’s routine everywhere. We particularly took inspiration from the lecture notes that mentioned that LOOKS is vital in UX.
All these piles up and we decided to go for our flash prototype, which would ultimately resolve most of these intricacies. But it was a risk, it was something we ideally envisaged, but was slightly less confident that it would be acceptable to the peers. We would also have to revamp and tweak our initial idea a wee bit so as to encompass more of the peers’ feedbacks, plus energizing our final prototype with sound lively background sound loop. It all went so smoothly. Thankfully, we persevered and persisted with it, and our eventual presentation was an incredible bang (we really did not expected it)! It yielded astonishing responses from the crowd… even receiving loud applauses and a real standing ovation! That’s really something we appreciate a great deal as designers, and that probably in a way, sums up our UX Evaluation.
USABILITY TEST
In carrying out our usability evaluation, we employed the popular Think-Aloud protocol, in which testers are supposed to voice out while they are interacting with the product. We would also slightly observe their reactions when interacting, as non-verbal cues do tell something. We have gathered 6 evaluators, mainly Targeted personas (3 advanced, 3 novice) to perform one of the 3 assigned tasks that we have conceived, so that users would not be in a frantic on what to do, but pre-occupied and focused on fulfilling a task. I was given the task of a facilitator, briefing them on the overview, the objective of the test and a brief demo as well as prompting them to ‘think aloud’.
* From Top to Bottom (L-R): Splash, News, Carparks, Booking, Help, Express Booking, Register.
Assigned Tasks
The 3 tasks as mentioned earlier on, are as follows (Booking – Task 1 & 2, Information enquiry – Task 3):
TASK 1: Booking a lot at Plaza Singapura the night before a movie.
Pre-requisites: Movie Tickets already bought, and car-park lots are readily available at Plaza Singapura.
TASK 2: Booking a lot at Plaza Singapura, 2 hours before movie.
Pre-requisites: Movie Tickets already bought, and car-park at Plaza Singapura is fully booked (need for alternative car-parks)
TASK 3: To locate car-park status of a mall at lunchtime.
Pre-requisites: Information seeking, car-parks have ample lots, seeking for alternatives as well.
Results
Generally, all evaluators managed to complete the assignment tasks successfully.
There were essentially no major predicaments, but the process of completion was slightly slower due to interacting with the system for the very first time. As for information enquiry, the process was very smooth, evaluators appreciated the efficiency and were pleasantly surprised that alternatives car-parks were presented to them, even though they have initial anxiety in using the feature.
One of the observations I personally took noticed was that, at first sight of the website, they were already impressed, but were skeptical towards the functionality of the website, whether is it smooth-going (they felt good looks = less behavioural benefits). But with increasing familiarity they begin to appreciate and even begin to like the website and its feature even more. This is essentially Berlyne’s model of aesthetics: Eventually with even greater familiarity we like them less, and look to other designs.
UX EVALUATION
After reviewing all the possible ways to measure UX, we decided to go for a two-pronged approach, of measuring two attributes which we felt was essential:
- Emotions, and
- Pleasures
EMOTIONS
In measuring emotions, we deployed the use of James Russell’s affective model: Circumplex of Emotions, that was mentioned in the lecture notes. We wanted to know how exactly our product have affected or aroused the user. Using a list of 6 expressive positive and negative terms, users were asked how they were affected by the outlook of our product.
Positive Terms
- Inspiration
- Desire
- Pleasant surprise
- Fascination
- Amusement
- Satisfaction
Negative Terms
- Disgust
- Unpleasant surprise
- Disappointment
- Contempt
- Dis-satifisaction
- Boredom
The responses for emotional evaluations are tabulated in raw average scores as well as modeling after James Russell’s Circumplex of emotions, and are clearly shown above, with relatively high inclination towards the positive appraisals, which was really flattering.
PLEASURES
As for pleasures, we really want to know how our product can make the users content is which aspects. Hence, we deployed a 5 point likert scale questionnaires based on 4 pleasures framework, where users are to evaluate on a list of questions ranging from physio, psycho, socio and ideo pleasures.
Generally, users appreciate the novelty and details put on the website. Experience ranks high among others (navigation and buttons play a rather important part), and they were generally excited about the product, which we are really pleased with. I guess aesthetic really plays an important part in UX. It simply catches attention, may it be positive/negative (positive in our case). It embeds no clear definition, but you feel it defined almost instantaneously when users are delighted by your product.
PEER FEEDBACKS
Besides the standing ovation that really surprised us, peers remarked that our inclusion of tiny features such as auto-complete of user inputs in textfields and auto-cursor locality, did help to elevate the UX. The testers also commented that the audio (which was not presented) was suitable to the theme.
Not to foget, peers also remarked on the effective usage of flash in our prototype. As they were having a debate in the earlier presentations over some of the peer’s technical implementation of their idea using flash, not being appropriate, they felt our Flash implementation suited the carpark theme ideally. One of the followups was that had our idea been implemented in static HTML, it might have lost its magic. Wonderful, they felt.
I felt that one of the factors that led to our successful UX delivery is all about, perception management: Looks, function and feel. We tried to really handle and take care of most touch points relevant till this phase (possible entry points): Product, packaging, brand, distribution, support, media. Also, sensorial design playing an effective role: it gave a prelude and sort of first impression. Last but not least, users’ power! Users feedback really gave us room to further enhance our product. Without user’s opinions, we would have been stuck at some point, not moving up to the next possible level. As such, UX experience is really, user-oriented and user-centric. Kudos to the users and evaluators, who have contributed to our project in one way or another. Deeply appreciates!
