User Test #2 - Store Owner

Test subject demographics:

· Number of test subjects: 3 students, 1 employee

· Gender: 3 females, 1 male

· Class: 2 Seniors, 1 graduate student, 1 alumnae

· Majors: History, Computer Science, Art/History, Electrical Engineering

Computer Usage:

All four users reported frequent usage of the computer.

Three users were most familiar with the Windows operating system and 1 used Mac OS X.

All four users had at least an averave familiarity with wizard-driven interfaces.

Interface-specific questions:

fter the users had a chance to interact with the interface in the user test, they responded to several questions about their experience.

All users said the interface was very self-explanatory.

Again, all users liked the layout of the interface.

Responses about what users liked about the interface:

+ Color coding of the map

+ Ease of using the wizard

+ Ability to click on the map and pop up store info

+ The potential for multiple ways to do tasks

Because the prototype lacked a legend (a mistake), each user pointed out that a legend would be needed if the map was color coded. Two people mentioned that the stores should be labeled (in the final version, this will be addressed).

Additional Suggestions:

One user in particular outlined that, "it was not absolutely clear that the 'Chat' button and 'Add to watch-list' button only referred to other stores."

Notes:

Overall, this round of user testing allowed us to note more than major difficulties with the interface. While we noticed some time issues (it would take longer

for some to complete some tasks), we probably will not address these, unless they are huge time delays, until we have a working protype/application for users to use.

We still had to give users hints at some parts of the test, but overall, the performance was fairly good.

Through observing the tests, we noticed ways in which we could improve the interface:

Be sure there are several ways to perform the major tasks (adding stores to the watch list, selecting a store, looking at information about a store, opening,

closing, saving, and loading a store). These can be done through right-click menus on the map, items in the menu, and buttons on the interface.

We noticed again that the labels over the tabbed pane groups needed to be more explicit. We updated the label for the watch list to make the meaning

more obvious.

Users found the tabs fairly easily for their store and then for the other stores. The information under the tabs seems to be relatively intuative and easy to find.

After this test, we decided that even though the color-coding of the map made it easier to read, this property does not lend itself to extinsibility if owners want

to add stores for which we do not have categories for. If we get rid of the color-coding, we won't need the legend (and this will save space on the interface).

We will add the names of the stores to the map eventually.