Panel Blog #1: Interaction & Usability

During a recent lecture our class had guest speakers Alan Borning and Laura Borboza. Alan is a professor in CS at the UW who played a part in the creation of the One Bus Away app, and Laura is a User Experience Researcher for Nordstrom and conducts testing for their online sales.

One Bus Away & Interaction

The One Bus Away project was started by Brian Ferris as a way for experienced riders to find out exactly when their bus would arrive. Interestingly, it branched out and is now used by people who are less familiar with the transit system. The interaction design process, as described by Alan, had several problems with user interpretation of symbols. As an example, a GPS signal was added to the time remaining for a bus to arrive. In order to show that a bus had actual GPS information, two quarter-circles were placed over the right corner of the minutes remaining. This was similar to internet connection symbols on phones and was supposed to be an easy way to avoid outright saying whether or not GPS was attached to a bus. It was also an effort to simplify the design of the app.

The problem of conveying information about bus routes to the user without a wall of text seems to encapsulate most interaction design issues in OBA. I think this is the aspect of the project that stands out to me the most. As a beginner in the field of app design, I didn’t fully realize how important the design of small symbols was when it comes to teaching a user information.

Nordstrom Direct & Usability

Nordstrom Direct is a system developed by Nordstrom and tested by Laura that allows users to purchase items before Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale each year. Laura’s goal was to make the interface easy to understand for a user looking to make a purchase. She walked through the process with users to determine what problems they might make. Many usability problems were found by her team where users got confused over a particular function of the site. One problem was that users could not understand the pricing system displayed below an item. They interpreted a cost to be a certain percent off, plus the anniversary sale, which was incorrect. Laura solved this by suggesting tweaks to how the prices and sales were presented.

The most useful idea I pulled from this presentation was how Laura corrected problems. She often chose simple yet effective changes that didn’t harm how the site worked or looked, but made it much easier to navigate. For example, the simple highlighting of a button in yellow made users much more likely to complete a task quickly, and the color fit the overall scheme of the website.

My Own Work

I can see definite room for improvement in my projects after listening to these speakers. For my usability test on microwaves, I think a more specific walk-through of the test would help me determine where a user’s problems arise. I should also have focused on how to solve the issues that are revealed much more then I did, because that is the entire goal of usability testing.

As far as interaction design, I think my most important flaw was thinking too simply. My design would likely be understood by a user because the buttons that were used were very simplistic. However it borrowed too much from other photo apps like Snapchat, and didn’t really reward the user during the experience. I would like to return to the app and try to improve the user experience (add more bells and whistles) to make using the app feel more rewarding, and change my photo outline into a more original design.