Palm Redesign Retrospective of Techniquesdchau/files/palm_redesign.pdfthe user’s mental model,...

Palm Redesign & Retrospective of Techniques Intro to HCI Methods — Fall 2004 Group #7 Polo Chau

Grace Chen

Yuan-Chou Chung

Alex Eiser

Lorri Nault

Guy Pyrzak

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Palm Redesign

Executive Summary 5

Redesign Themes 7

Task Scenario 9

Retrospective of Techniques

Contextual Inquiry (CI) & Contextual Design (CD) 39

Heuristic Evaluations (HE) 39

Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) 40

Think-Aloud (TA) 41

Interaction Relabeling 42

Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) 43

Appendices A. Design Changes

A1. Summary table of design changes ii A2. Detailed design changes vii

B. Usability Aspect Reports (UARs) B1. UARs from HE B2. UARs from CW B3. UARs from TA B4. Newly added UARs

C. Contextual Inquiry &

Contextual Design Data

C1. Transcript C2. Workflow model C3. Cultural model C4. Sequence model C5. Artifact Model C6. Physical model

Palm Redesign

Palm Redesign

Executive Summary

REDESIGN THEMES

Group 7

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

We are a design group consisting of both American and international students with

backgrounds in design, computer science, engineering and project management. Our

redesign themes were maintaining consistency across all Palm applications, better

labeling to reduce confusion, and giving the user more freedom when using the Palm

Pilot. The prominent design problems we ran into were poor labeling, a lack of interface

interaction consistency, hidden functionality, lack of quick access to detailed information,

and buttons that do not have affordances for clicking and editing. The techniques we

found the most useful in our redesign were Think-aloud, Heuristic Evaluation and

Contextual Inquiry and Contextual Design. We found Keystroke Level Modeling and

Cognitive Walkthrough were not as useful, however, they did provide useful evidence.

The Interaction Relabeling method was only useful as a brain storming exercise. The

lessons we have learned throughout this process were beneficial not only for our

redesign of the Palm Pilot, but also for our future academic pursuits.

Palm Redesign

Redesign Themes Consistency Across all Palm Applications

Better Labeling to Reduce Confusion

Freedom

REDESIGN THEMES

Group 7

REDESIGN THEMES Based on the data collected over the

course of the semester, we decided to

focus on three themes in our redesign

of the Palm: Consistency, labeling and

freedom.

Consistency across all Palm applications

Consistency is a glaring issue with the existing

Palm interface. When we began conducting our

Heuristic Evaluations, we had over 20 HEs that

touched on the issue of consistency. We noted

both visual and functional discrepancies.

The existing interface is peppered with a number

of visual inconsistencies, from small errors such as

the extra ellipses on some delete buttons, (HE-

35); to more serious issues such as missing title

bars and inconsistent help icons (HE-27).

Although they may seem like cosmetic issues, it is

likely that novice users will get confused and

frustrated if they do not have a reliable mental

model to depend on.

Functional inconsistencies are even more

important for aiding the user in completing their

tasks. For example, as noted in HE-23, the

buttons on the physical device are mapped

differently in several applications. In the Date

Book, the arrows allow the user to change the

day/week/month, flipping through the dates

horizontally but in others the buttons are used for

vertical scrolling.

Based on this data and the fact the cost of

implementing these changes is low. We felt we

should try to make the interface as seamless as

possible in our redesign. Some major changes we

decided to implement based on this theme are

consistent design and placement of help icons

(design #7), scrollbars (design #10), and menu

functionality (design #6).

Better Labeling to Reduce Confusion

In the current Palm, some things were not

labeled adequately, some labels did not match

the user’s mental model, e.g. “beam”. The Think

aloud data really showed us how unclear a lot of

the labeling in the Palm is. The user often seemed

unable to comprehend the labels of applications

and functions during the task, expressing

frustration and bewilderment, especially within

the preferences application (TA-11). This

confusion often hindered his ability to accomplish

his goal of completing the task. We addressed

this issue by changing labels or icons that seemed

unclear (design #2), adding new labels where

needed (design #4) and adding additional

affordances for clicking (design #15) so users

would not have to rely solely on textual labels to

navigate the interface.

REDESIGN THEMES

Group 7

Freedom

We found the Palm to be very restrictive for the

most part, but as we noted in the CW, there are

additional ways that the user may try to

accomplish a task. Also our users may range from

novice to expert, so having shortcuts to save time

was important to incorporate. Keeping with the

theme of “the user is not like me” we wanted to

provide ways to make the interface as flexible as

possible to accommodate user preferences. We

were careful to keep options that follow this

theme in the current interface, as well as

designing new solutions to accommodate our

users. For example, the All Day and No Time

options currently exist in date book, providing the

user the freedom to schedule untimed

meetings(HE-53); however we moved them into

a more fitting space, adding them as an

alternative to setting the time of the meeting,

(design #15).

Palm Redesign

Task Scenario

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

TASK SCENARIO DESCRIPTION Joe D. is a professor in the Design Faculty at a

University who is responsible for meeting with

students, teaching classes, and helping out with

family chores. Joe has been an Apple Macintosh

user for many years and enjoys using the graffiti

features of his Palm Pilot, which the department

provided him last year as part of his promotion to

full professor.

At the end of class, on Monday December 6th, a

student named Sandy approaches Joe and

explains that she will not be able to meet this

week during their regularly scheduled

appointment because she needs to meet with her

HCI Methods group to work on that classes final

project. The student would instead like to meet

later on during the week whenever Joe is free.

Joe is fine with this idea since his day is already

quite busy and would like to get a few free

minutes to work on his grant proposal.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 1 Tap on the week view.

Joe turns on his Palm Pilot by pushing on the

physical button with the Date Book icon.

Figure 1

Design Change

1: 5 Way Button

2: Change Physical Button Icons:

We changed the icons for the physical buttons

“Applications”, “Address” and “Memo”, and

moved the Application button to be inline with

the Address, Memo, and Date Book buttons. The

Calculator, To Do List, Find and Menu buttons

were moved to the toolbar above the graffiti area

as described in design change 3. The Applications

button’s icon was changed to an icon of a house.

The Address book was changed to an icon of a

business card, with the outline of a profile on the

left hand side and text to the right of it. Memo

was changed to an icon of a post-it that looks like

a square with a folded bottom right corner.

4: Moved “Power Button” & Appearance

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7


When the Palm Pilot turns on Joe sees the current

day’s appointments. He also notices that his

battery is a little low, but he isn’t worried because

he knows that his Palm Pilot will not lose his data

when it runs out of power. He also notices what

time it is and realizes he needs to get to his office

for office hours.

Joe needs to find out when he is free during the

upcoming week to meet with the student so he

taps on the week view.

Figure 2

Design Change

5: Bubbled Meetings

6: Application Menu

7: Help Button

8: Scroll Bar Available at All Times

9: Time and Battery Life Indicators

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7


Joe can tell by glancing at the week view when he

is free by the times that are not currently occupied

by blocks of appointments. Joe tells the student

when he is going to be free in the upcoming

week and after talking about the different times,

they decide on a lunch meeting on Friday,

December 3rd, at 12:00 pm.

Joe taps on the start time of when the meeting

will occur, 12:00 pm, December 3rd.

Figure 3

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 4 Expand the graffiti text entry area.

Upon tapping on the start time of the meeting, a

“New Event” window appears. Joe notices a

flashing cursor in the “Name” field and realizes

that he is now able to type in the name of his

appointment. He also notices the start time has

already been set to 12:00pm. In order to type in

the name Joe must bring up the graffiti area.

To bring up the graffiti area Joe taps on the

upward arrow in the lower right hand corner of

the screen.

Figure 4

Design Change

3: Collapsible Graffiti Area.

11: Text Entry Field for Name Added to “New

Event” and “Event Details” Window.

12: Added Category to Event Window.

13: Split Time Into Start & End Time.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 5 Type in name of the meeting in the “Name” field.

Joe notices the graffiti area come up smoothly

and naturally. As the graffiti area comes up he

notices the entire screen adjusts to keep the

current window viewable. Some of the screen is

hidden but he knows it is still accessible via

scrollbars located on the right hand side of the

screen.

Joe, who has been using a Palm Pilot for quite

some time, types in the name of the meeting

“Meeting With Sandy” with graffiti, but he

remembers how when he first started how easy it

was for him to bring up the keyboard in the same

area for easier input.

Figure 5

Design Change

3: Collapsible Graffiti Area.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 6 Tap “OK”.

Now that he has typed in the meeting time Joe

thinks he is done setting up the meeting, he taps

on the “OK” button to close the “New Event”

window.”

Figure 6

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 7 Tap “Change End Time” button

After Joe clicks “OK” to save the meeting, a

window pops up with a warning message:

"Attention: End time has not been set. Use

1:30 PM as end time?". The available options

are "Yes" and "Change End time". There is a

checkbox for default behavior: “Don’t show

this dialogue again.”

He remembers that the meeting he wants to

schedule is two hours long, not the default

one hour so he taps the “Change End Time”

button to bring him to the “Set End Time”

window.

Figure 7

Design Change

14: Warning for Contextual Mistakes

When Joe makes a mistake which is unique to a

particular part of the interface, such as not

putting in an end time for an event which does

not last all day, the system alerts Joe to that

mistake he has made and gives him information

about default settings and methods for fixing the

contextual mistake.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 8 Set End Time

The “Set End Time” window pops up on the

screen, displaying the default end time of

1 PM. Joe knows the meeting will run to 2 PM,

so he sets the new end time by tapping on the

up arrow once to get to 2 PM.

Figure 8

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 9 Tap “OK”

Joe sees that the end time is now set to 2 PM,

reflecting the real end time of the meeting, he

taps on the “OK” button to close the dialog

box.

Figure 9

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 10 Tap “OK” to Save Appointment

Upon tapping “OK”, the “Set End Time”

dialog box closes and Joe is returned to the

“New Event” window. Joe looks at the screen

and notices the “End Time” has been updated

to 2 PM. He double checks the rest of the

information and sees that everything looks

correct. He is done setting the meeting, so he

taps the “OK” button to save the meeting and

close the dialog box.

Figure 10

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 11 Tap On the Meeting at 11 AM, Nov 29th

Upon saving the new meeting, Joe is returned

to the Date Book’s week view. Joe knows he

needs to delete the old meeting, which he

remembers was scheduled from 11-2PM on

Nov 29th. He sees the gray rectangle blocking

off that meeting time in the week view. He

taps on the gray block to select that meeting.

Figure 11

Design Change

5: Bubbled Meetings

In the current Palm, when a meeting in the week

view is tapped on, it only shows the user the

name of the meeting. Our new design would

open up the “Event Details” window for that

meeting when the corresponding block or

bubble is clicked on the week view.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 12 Tap on “Delete” button

Upon selecting the meeting on Nov 29th, the

“Event Details” window for the old meeting is

displayed on the screen. Joe knows he no

longer needs this meeting in his calendar as he

has just rescheduled it. Joe sees the “Delete”

button is available and clickable. He taps on

“Delete” to erase the meeting.

Figure 12

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 13 Tap “All” button, mistakenly

After Joe taps the “Delete” button, the “Delete

Repeating Event” dialog appears. Joe wants to

delete only the meeting for the current week. He

should tap the “Current” button, however he

mistakenly taps the “All” button deleting all of his

repeating meetings.

Figure 13

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 14 Tap “Date Book” menu

The dialog closes after he clicks the “All” button,

showing the week view as in Figure 14. Joe wants

to correct his mistake by undoing his last action,

deleting the repeating meetings. He knows he

can undo that mistake using the “Undo” function

of Date Book, and he knows that “Undo” can be

found in the menu of Date Book. He notices the

down arrow next to “Date Book”, and based on

his prior experience with computers and pull-

down menus, he knows that it is clickable. He

taps “Date Book”.

Figure 14

Design Change

6: “Date Book” Menu

The existing menu is labeled with the current

time. In our redesign, we’ve labeled the menu

with the application name “Date Book”, so that it

is consistent with other application menus. We’ve

also added the “Down” arrow to the menu to

provide users with a better affordance that it is

clickable and a menu will be brought up upon

clicking.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 15 Tap “Edit”

Joe notices the pull-down menu appears on the

screen. He knows that “Undo” is inside the menu

“Edit”, so he taps “Edit” to bring up the “Edit”

menu.

Figure 15

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 16 Tap the menu item “Undo”

Upon tapping “Edit”, the “Edit” menu appears.

Joe sees the menu item “Undo”. He knows that

the meetings that he has just mistakenly deleted

will be restored by “Undo” by tapping it. Joe taps

the “Undo” menu item.

Figure 16

Design Change

16: Can Undelete a Meeting in Date Book

In the existing Palm, users can only undo deleted

characters. In our redesign, “Undo” can undelete

meetings as well, so that users can recover

meetings that they have mistakenly deleted,

which conforms to Heuristics 9 : “Help users

recognize, diagnose and recover form errors”.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 17 Tap the meeting on “Monday 11am - 2pm”

After the “Undo” menu item is tapped, the “Date

Book” menu closes, as shown in Figure 18.

Joe’s repeating meetings are restored. He

continues by deleting just this week’s meeting. He

taps on the gray block signifying the meeting on

“Monday, Nov 29, 11am – 2pm” to bring up the

“Event Details” dialog.

Figure 17

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 18 Tap “Delete” button

Upon tapping the gray block in the week view,

the “Event Details” dialog appears. He notices the

“Delete” button and taps it.

Figure 18

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 19 Tap on “Current” button

After tapping on “Delete”, the “Delete Repeating

Events” dialog is displayed (Figure 19). Joe taps on

the button labeled “Current” after realizing his

mistake earlier.

Figure 19

Design Change

6: Application Menu Under the design change 6, the title for the delete

dialog was renamed: “Delete Repeating Events”.

This helps the user understand what impact his

choice on this dialog will have.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 20 Tap on the meeting at 12 PM on Friday

After deleting the Monday meeting, Joe is

returned to the week view. He realizes that he

needs to set an alarm for his 12 PM meeting,

since it is a non-routine meeting, and he will

probably forget about it. Joe taps on the existing

meeting with Sandy (Figure 20).

Figure 20

Design Change

6: “Date Book” Menu

From both the heuristic Evaluations, the think-

aloud and personal experience it is difficult to

access event details from the week view. Part of

design change 6, means that when the user taps

on an event in the week views, it opens the

“Event Details” dialog.

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 21 Check the “Alarm” check box

After tapping the event in the week view, Joe sees

the “Alarm” checkbox (Figure 21). Joe taps the

“Alarm” checkbox.

Figure 21

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 22 Change the alarm time

Joe notices that the checkbox next to “Alarm” is

checked, signifying that it is activated. He also

notices a field for setting when the alarm will ring,

and that a cursor is blinking waiting for input. Joe

is not sure what he will be doing on Friday and

might need as much as fifteen minutes to get to

the meeting. Joe notices that the graffiti is still

expanded, so he uses it to change the time from

“5” Minutes to “15” Minutes (Figure 22).

Figure 22

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 23 Taps “OK”

Joe thinks he has completed his task of setting an

alarm, so he taps the “OK” button to save his

changes (Figure 23).

Figure 23

TASK SCENARIO

Group 7

STEP 24 Presses “Power” button

Upon tapping the “OK” button, Joe is returned to

the week view screen (Figure 23). The clock in the

toolbar tells Joe it is almost time for his office

hours, he presses the Palm’s “Power” button to

turn it off (Figure 24), says goodbye to Sandy, and

wishes her good luck with her HCI Methods class

project.

Figure 24

Palm Redesign

Redesign Summary

REDESIGN SUMMARY

Group 7

REDESIGN SUMMARY

Based on our UARs and CI/CD models, we

propose seventeen design changes and depicted

most of them in the above task scenario. We

explain our design changes in detail in

Appendices A1 and A2. These appendices explain

the problems, motivations, our redesign choices,

the justifications, possible trade-offs, and data

references. In addition to the specific changes

made in the appendices and illustrated in the

task, we are recommending a number of other

minor changes throughout the Palm. These

changes focus on our themes of consistency

across applications, better labeling, and user

freedom.

In addition, we constructed a KLM model to

validate the performance improvement of one of

our design changes. The KLM performance

evidence combined with our extensive user

testing data, explain our high confidence in the

redesigned Palm Pilot. These changes will

improve the usability of the next version of the

Palm Pilot, especially the Date Book and many of

the other applications.

Palm Redesign Retrospective of Techniques

Overview

Contextual Inquiry (CI) & Contextual Design (CD)

Heuristic Evaluations (HE)

Cognitive Walkthrough (CW)

Think-Aloud (TA)

Interaction Relabeling

RETROSPECTIVE OF TECHNIQUES

Group 7

Over the course of the semester we have learned

a variety of usability methods, from the labor

intensive Contextual Inquiry, to the creative

Interaction Relabeling. Each method produced

valuable data and evidence to support our design

changes. However we feel they are not

sufficiently effective in isolation. Only in

combination were we able to generate innovative

design ideas and develop a breakthrough new

product based on accepted practices of good

design and the needs of our target users.

The Contextual Inquiry and Contextual

Design(CI/CD) methods that we performed

consisted of observing an interview of a university

professor in the context of their work and then

analyzing that data to create several model which

represented different aspects of the professor’s

work. Our group found that CI/CD was the most

useful for coming up with interesting and

innovative ideas that were inspired by the user.

We found the ability to observe the tools our user

used in every day work, especially iCal and Post-

its was very important in informing our redesign.

Because of the user’s familiarity and frequent use

of these tools we integrated many of these

features into our redesign, including the

categorization of events, using a bubble effect to

give an affordance for clicking, and using the

image of a Post-it to signify notes-to-self. The

CI/CD gave us so many ideas that we ended up

not using all of them because while they were

very interesting the problems they solved were

not severe enough to warrant the changes and

costs they would have required. For example, we

thought adding split-screen functionality,

document scanning and a file organization tool

based on the breakdowns we observed, however

we didn’t feel these were practical based on the

limited screen space and memory of the Palm.

The CI/CD method allowed our group to think

outside the box while still keeping us focused on

actual data from a real user. This is perhaps the

most unique and strongest aspect of CI/CD.

Contextual Inquiry and contextual design is not

without its flaws, however. The process of

drawing out all the models was very time

consuming and mentally tasking, requiring much

debate and discussion before we could complete

even one model. And then after so much effort,

we had really only analyzed one user. The

amount of time spent on the process doesn’t

seem to reflect the significance of the data. The

sheer amount of data that we gathered from the

CI/CD was also overwhelming. We found it

difficult to cut up both the modeling process as

well as the models themselves, into smaller

easier-to-manage pieces. This might have

something to do with the unique visual nature of

modeling. However, this visual nature also

makes them harder to refer back to unlike the

clearly formatted UARs. We were also unable to

fix as many of the breakdowns in the CI/CD than

in the other methods because the user never

actually used a Palm Pilot or hand held computer

during the inquiry. The CI/CD data’s richness

depended very heavily on the experience of the

evaluators, and therefore the data seemed very

Overview

Contextual Inquiry & Contextual Design


Group 7

subjective. It was therefore difficult to know

what the “correct” answers were.

Some ideas we had for improving the process

was to designate two roles, one of a person

writing on a white board, and second recording

the drawings on the computer. This was

important because the graphical input of the

models was much slower on the computer than

it was on the whiteboard. The computer user

would then catch up during discussions. We also

felt that we did not have enough tools to

optimize our work process. For example the video

is an essential part of the analysis; however, we

lacked a media player that allowed for instant

replays and bookmaking of the video. We felt

that these tools would have been extremely

helpful since we spent a lot of time trying to

rewind only a few seconds or remembering

where a particular event in a video occurred. This

was complicated by the fact that the timestamps

in the transcript were from 1 continuous video,

but were given 3, so the time stamps did not

match up properly.

Overall, we felt that CI/CD was a great way to

think outside of the box for design ideas, while

still keeping the user at the center of the design.

These design ideas were essential when we

started working on solutions for the Problem

UARs from the other methods.

Heuristic evaluation Heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection

method where expert evaluators analyze and

evaluate an interface and compare it to a set of

heuristics or “rules of thumb”. This method helps

inform the design process by finding usability

problems and good interface aspects to retain in

the new design.

Of all the methods, we felt this was one of the

most useful. The method was very easy to learn

and execute. There are no real time restraints, so

evaluation can be done when it is convenient to

the evaluators. It can be conducted at any point

in the design process, although it is most useful

towards the beginning of the project, where

there is an opportunity to fix glaring issues before

users waste time fumbling with them.

As a deliverable, HE Usability Aspect Reports

(UARs) are excellent for both the developer and

the client. The client receives a detailed report

that is easy to read and understand; the

developer gets a list of problems with evidence to

support them, suggestions for fixing them, and

ways to prioritize making changes, per severity

ratings.

Some drawbacks are that the evaluation works

best with multiple evaluators working individually

and then coming together to discuss. Depending

on the number of evaluators, this can be an

expensive and time consuming process.

We felt this method wouldn’t be as useful

without data from other methods because it was

really too broad to catch the details found in the

Think Aloud and Cognitive Walkthrough. On the

flipside, although the TA data revealed more

problems than our HEs UARs found, the user in

the TA also had the all same problems we found


Group 7

in the Date Book application, validating our

UARS.

Being a large group, we generated more HEs, but

the difference between the number of HEs found

by 5 and 6 evaluators was only marginally

significant at 8%. While consolidating the HE

UARs was time consuming, discussing each HE

UAR one by one helped us recognize subtle but

distinct differences between similar sounding

UARs. Because the scope of the evaluation is so

broad, we had very few overlapping UARs. We

feel that if the focus was narrower, specifically on

the date book application, as most of the other

methods were, we may have had more in

common and more relevant HE UARs for our

redesign.

We felt that designating severity ratings was a

very important part of the HE process, as it

informed us of which problems we really wanted

to fix in our redesign. We had some problems

determining the severity of each HE, but chalked

that up to us not being experienced or “expert”

evaluators. It may have been more useful if one

of us was an expert in the domain, as most of

our group was not familiar with PDA standards.

We hypothesize that the most commonly found

HE UARs might be related to higher severity

ratings. We had an idea to consider increasing

the severity of a UAR by a half or whole point if it

was one that most group members found. We

did a quick survey of our results to test our

theory. We found that the most severe problems

also seemed to have the most members citing

them. Although many more tests would have to

be run to recognize a trend, we feel this is a

worthy hypothesis to pursue in the future.

We wished in our original heuristic evaluation, we

could have noted more than one good aspect in

the interface, because when it came time to do

the redesign we did not have much evidence to

keep certain good features in the interface. These

features need to be recorded because sometimes

when you got rid of the negative, a tradeoff

could be eliminating a good feature as well.

Overall, we feel that HE was extremely useful in

identifying a wide variety of problems, although

focusing on the Date Book would probably

uncover more issues relevant to our redesign of

the palm. We recommend using Heuristic

Evaluation with a more task-focused method,

such as CW or TA to get the richest data.

Cognitive Walkthrough

Cognitive Walkthrough is an analytic usability

evaluation method used to analyze user

interfaces, especially in “first-time” use.

Our group feels the benefit of CW was to help us

to break things down into very small steps, such

as click on an icon, and helped us think about the

interface and interaction in a very in-depth way.

We found additional problems we wouldn’t

necessary uncover in HE. The problems found in

our CW where also found in the TA, showing

that our CW analysis was accurate.


Group 7

Another advantage of CW is it is not required to

have a working prototype. We can conduct the

CW on initial paper prototypes to evaluate it. The

results from the CW can inform the evaluator if

the design has the right scent and is on the right

track.

We feel that CW is a very subjective method. We

are not the user and “the user is not like me.”

However, we set assumptions and hypotheses

about users’ knowledge and action and evaluate

users’ actions based on our own interpretations.

So in CW, there exists a big chance that the

evaluators do not consider the most logical

choices. In addition, the CW assignment we

worked on only showed us one path to achieve

the use’s goal. We can’t be certain if this matches

the user’s preferred path. It was unclear whether

conflict that arouse was just due to the fact the

evaluator thought a different path was more

intuitive.

We suggest that we should be allowed to answer

“maybe” in CW. “Maybe” becomes a branch,

and we can give reasons for both “Yes” and

“No” and create UAR for “No.” In this way, we

are able to propose more problems and solutions

for further redesign references and inspirations.

We think CW and TA could be grouped together

among all the methods we’ve learned because

both CW and TA are task orientated. Reviewers

evaluate an interface in the context of one

specific task. The advantage of CW is it is cheaper

than TA. We thought about the combining CW

and TA, eg, conducting a TA on the CW, using

the same interface and steps for the user.

We all agree that group interaction was more

comprehensive in CW. However, being a large

group that has an even number of people, we

have 3-3 opinions sometimes when we vote. The

consensus is not as easy to achieve without an

additional member to break the tie.

Think-Aloud

Think-Aloud is a user-centered and task-oriented

method where developers can get a lot of data

directly from users by giving them a task. We

thought that TA really helped us to gain rich data

for our redesign in a relatively short time.

In our experience of TAs, during the analysis

phase we found that the difficult part was to

interpret the participants’ expressions or his

actions, such as his hesitations because we were

not there to witness them. In this assignment we

created UARs by only watching the movie clips

that only focused on the screen, so we lost the

contextual information of the participant, such as

his movement on the keyboard, which could be

evidence for an important UAR. We also found

that different interpretations of the users’

expression could prompt the designers to choose

different criteria, and the criteria were very

helpful for us to consider what the real problems

or good aspects were. Although we couldn’t run

the whole process of TA in this assignment

(because it is hard to grade), we still think it

would help us to better understand how to do

TA correctly and to get more supporting

information on the users.


Group 7

Our suggestion for the UARs of TA is that we

may not need to have every screen shot for every

single change because it is not very useful. It is

clear enough when we use time stamps with

some screen shots at key points and combine

them with the description of what the

participants did.

We also found that it was really hard to

understand what the participants were thinking

about because they didn’t really Think-Aloud.

This was probably because few of them had

experience with TA, and they didn’t realize that

they were thinking about was really important.

Therefore, we suggest that there should be a

warm up session for training the participants to

be more familiar with TA before we run TAs. In

the warm up or training session, the participants

have the chance to practice how to Think-Aloud

more than the example in the reading allows. The

training session and the real Think-Aloud session

should be separated due to the participants are

not able to concentrate after two hours. We also

think if the training session could be run in a

group, then the participants would feel less

pressure. Therefore, they can have better

performance on TA and we can get more

accurate data from TA method.

Interaction Relabeling

In our interaction relabeling session, we tried to

apply Palm’s functions on an electronic massager.

We found the session fun and educational; it

allowed us to step back and look at an object

completely unrelated to the Palm, and come up

with creative redesign ideas.

While the session stimulated us to think of many

redesign ideas, we found that it might not be

very useful for our Palm redesign. The reason was

that we were given only one object, the

massager. Its physical characteristics and

functions limited the scope of the redesign ideas

that we came up with. An example was that a

massager had substantially fewer interaction

widgets than the baby-busy box.

We thought it was beneficial to consider other

groups’ findings about their objects as well,

because each group had their own interesting

ideas about their object as each different physical

device lends itself to some interesting interaction

modes. We also thought it would be useful to

use create an affinity diagram to draw out the

main themes from the ideas, and use them as the

basis for our redesign.

We discussed at what ideal point relabeling

should be conducted in the whole redesign

process. We thought it should best be carried out

right before brainstorming for redesign ideas, but

after CI, CD, HE, CW and TA. In this way, we

would have all the data and evidence necessary

for supporting our redesign ideas that might

show up during relabeling. Also, our attention

would not be narrowed down to our own ideas,

which might happen if we did the relabeling

during our redesign process after we’ve already

come up with some ideas.

We also discussed the alternative of relabeling a

piece of software instead of a physical object. An

example would be to relabel Photoshop, where


Group 7

we can duplicate a meeting using the “clone

tool”, and paint an alarm on a meeting to set the

alarm for it. We thought relabeling a piece of

software might be ideal in considering other

possible software interaction modes that can be

directly applied to the Palm.

We thought the relabeling session was excellent

for stimulating and inspiring off-the-wall ideas,

but the usefulness of the ideas were generally

minimal because it didn’t provide us with good

evidence for the ideas themselves. An example

was that we came up with the idea that the users

could have interchangeable physical buttons for

the Palm, so that they can customize the buttons

to launch their most frequently used applications.

Unfortunately, we did not have enough solid

evidence to justify the change.

KLM Retrospective

Keystroke level modeling is a member of the

GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods and Selection

rules) family of human performance models. KLM

is used specifically for testing the performance of

an interface when used by an expert user. Since

KLM cannot be used to identify problems in the

current interface, we used it to test the

performance of a task designed to exemplify our

design changes.

KLM produces both a numeric value of the time

required to perform a task, and a trace of the

operations that the user performs. In order to

compare a single task, we needed to create a

model of the original palm, and one for our

prototype. This makes creating KLM models time

consuming, however once created, they are easy

to modify and compare with other models.

Using, CogTool a research based application for

automating the construction of KLM models, we

created simple HTML prototypes of our interfaces

that could be shared amongst the team and used

to demo our interface to other interested parties.

We could also use these HTML prototypes to

demonstrate our redesign to the client.

While creating these prototypes, we ran into

several problems, one of which was not covered

under the CogTool user guide. The primary

problem we encountered was when we used a

“:” in creating the HTML. This caused CogTool

Behavior Recorder to crash. We have

communicated with the developers, and they

have agreed to fix this problem. The end result

was that creating and running the KLM models

took longer then they should have.

Once constructed, we tested both the original

palm model, and our new model and examined

the trace output. The traces indicated exactly

how one of our redesigns significantly improved

performance. Examining the traces revealed that

our new design for Bubbled Meetings avoided

several repetitive tasks from the original design.

Additionally, CogTool provided us with a

percentage improvement over the original

design. For this reason we where able to use the

KLM models as supporting evidence for why our

prototype out performs the original. KLM was

very useful in validating the performance of our

new design, but was not helpful in coming up

with new ideas.


Group 7 Page i

Appendices

A. Design Changes A1. Summary table of design changes

A2. Detailed design changes

A. Design Changes

A1. Summary Table of Design

Changes

APPENDICES Summary Table of Design Changes

Group 7 Page iii

Table 1: Summary of Design Changes

Redesign Idea Motivation Evidence Justification Tradeoffs

1 Add 5-way button The up, down arrows are replaced with a 5-way button.

Several HEs indicated that the physical device buttons did not map well to the various interactions that they performed.

HE-12 HE-13 HE-23

By adding a 5-way button, we are giving the user additional freedom.

More expensive and easier to break then a single button. More work for the application designer.

2 Change physical button icons The physical button icons are changed to reflect the users mental models.

In the TA as well as our HE, the evaluators had difficulty figuring out what many of the icons meant.

HE-33 HE-49 TA-09

In the CI we observed the user often used post-it notes to make quick notes to themselves. The memo program serves a similar purpose in the Palm Pilot.

To Do List application is no longer available as a physical button. Another trade-off is that the new icons are new to veteran users.

3 Collapsible Graffiti Area Making the Graffiti area collapsible adds more screen space.

A number of our design solutions in the UARs came with a tradeoff of clutter due to lack of screen space.

AE-HE-01 AP-HE-03 GP-HE-03 LN-HE-01 LN-HE-04

Many of the user problems from the TA are avoided with adequate screen space to hold more information and visual cues.

A frequent graffiti user will have to make one extra step to pull up the graffiti screen.

4 Label and reposition power button Label and reposition power button to top-right corner.

It is unclear that the button is for turning on/off the Palm since it is not labeled. It may also be pressed accidentally.

Labeling: HE-22 Repositioning: inspired by CI data, but not motivated by UARs

Labeling makes it clear it is a power button. Repositioning prevent it from being accidentally pressed.

Additional cost in redesigning the Palm Pilot’s case.

5 Bubbled Meetings The event label is replaced with a rounded button that looks clickable and reflects the length of the meeting.

In the TA, users could not access details. They could not find the alarm settings. It is difficult to determine at a glance the length of a meeting.

CI: ICal uses this functionality (v5 0:05-0:10) TA-04 TA-10 HE-20 HE-39

By replacing the text line with a button, we are making the event look clickable. This will replace the details button, and make

Numerous small events will cause overlapping bubbles to grow, leading to potential confusions.


Group 7 Page iv

finding alarm settings easier.

6 Application menu Title bars and menus are consistent across all applications and have affordance for clicking.

HE-17, HE-25, and HE-36 all describe similar problems with the menu and title bar of Palm applications involving lack of consistency and affordance for clicking.

HE-17 HE-25 HE-36

The redesigned title bar contains the name of the application. This fixes the problem mentioned in HE-25.

Applications that currently do not display the title of the application in the title bar area will need to be redesigned.

7 Consistent Help Help is consistently available in all Palm Applications

The current Palm interface does not have consistent help menus. This violates the heuristic of Help Documentation.

HE-26 HE-27

It is important to have help available at all times to the user.

Applications that use the top right corner of the screen will need to be redesigned.

8 All times of day made available in Date Book All times of the day are made available via a scrollbar.

User from the TA had trouble finding time that was outside the day’s default range of times (8 am-6 pm)

TA-02 Users can go to a time outside the default range by scrolling which is consistent with other applications.

Scrollbar uses additional space on the right edge of screen leaving less space for meeting descriptions.

9 Add Time & Battery A battery life indicator, and digital clock were added to the toolbar (see design 3).

The batteries on a Palm Pilot can die, causing data loss. The battery life is not displayed on most screens of the Palm Pilot. The clock is a frequently used function.

HE-25 HE-31

The battery indicator will warn people when the battery life is running low, the time indicator will keep people informed on the time.

The battery and time indicators take up space on the toolbar, which could be used for user specified applications.

10 Unify scrolling widget appearances Scrollbar widgets are consistent across all applications.

Some scrolling widgets are scrollbars while others are up and down arrows.

HE-24

Scrollbar is preferred over arrows because user can tell their current position relative to the whole document.

Scrollbars take up more space than up and down arrows.

11 “Name” field In Date Book the TA-10 Adding the Does not allow


Group 7 Page v

added to “New Event” window User can enter the name of the event in the “New Event” window

only way to enter a name for the meeting is to type it directly into the day view window at the start time specified. Meetings with out labels are not saved.

name option to the “New Event” and “Event Details” screen keeps all event info in the same window.

expert users to type a name in quickly into the day view.

12 Add “Category” in Date Book A meeting can be assigned a category designated by color.

In the CI artifact model, user used different notations to describe different types of meetings.

CI Artifact Model

Users can better visualize different types of meetings through the use of color.

The screen may look visually distracting after adding colors for meetings.

13 Split “Time” into “Start Time” and “End time” Use both a start and an end time in the “Event Details” screen.

The TA user did not realize he needed to set an end time, and did not see the end time function in the “Set Time” dialog.

TA-08 HE-19 HE-21

Splitting the time field ensures the users sees the end time, and the new set time dialog, makes it easier to set the start and end times.

More time is need to set the start and end time, since additional dialogs are needed.

14 Warning for Contextual Mistakes Applications warn users about default settings and common mistakes.

The TA user forgot to set the label of an upcoming meeting and the end time of another meeting.

TA-08 TA-10

By giving an alert that help and inform the user to their mistakes we reduce the likelihood of the user making the same mistake again.

Requires user to read a message and make an additional tap.

15 “All Day” and “No Time“ Options Added “All Day” and “No Time” options for setting meeting times.

Events can be all day, or have no specific start or end time. These meeting options do not make sense in the new “Set Time” dialog created in design change 13.

HE-53 There was no place for these options except in the new event window.

The addition of these two options adds more visual clutter to the “New Event” screen.

16 Can Undelete a Meeting in Date Book Undo allows user

The impact of accidentally deleting a meeting is high. The current

HE-05 HE-41

Being able to undelete a meeting provides users a

Palm may need more memory to store the deleted


Group 7 Page vi

to undelete meetings as well as characters.

“Undo” functionality does not allow users to correct this mistake; they can only undo deleted characters.

means to recover from mistakes.

meetings.

17 Alphabetically Sorting Lists All lists are sorted alphabetically.

Lists used in Palm applications are not always sorted.

HE-42 Sorted lists are easier to use to find items due to principles from MHP.

Some programming effort required.

A. Design Changes

A2. Detailed Design Changes

APPENDICES Detailed Design Changes

Group 7 Page viii

A2. Detailed Design Changes

DESIGN CHANGE 1 5 Way Button

Problem

The up down arrows do not match the interface

very well, and provide no way of selecting options

in the interface.

Motivation

The current design of the Palm Pilot uses a pair of

up and down buttons on the physical interface let

the user scroll through and manipulate the

interface of the Palm Pilot. One of the major

problems with this interface (HE-13, HE-23) is that

these arrows do not always affect the same thing.

In one case, they might cause a left and right

movement, and in others an up and down. With

only 2 buttons, the application developers need to

decide what function pressing up and down

would cause. In some cases an application (like

the Date Book) might have more then one use of

arrows, and the current design only lets you

perform one action, creating dissociation between

the pressing the buttons and the effect they are

causing.

Figure 25

Redesign

We replaced the up down arrows with a five-way

button (Figure 25) allowing more flexibility in the

users interactions with the Palm Pilot.


Group 7 Page ix

Justification

By adding a five-way button, we can map the

directions of the button to the interface, and give

the user an additional way to select a highlighted

element. For example, they could quickly navigate

the date-book application to find an

appointment, and get the details on that

appointment without using the stylus. The issues

in HE-13 & HE-23 would be solved because each

set of arrows would be able to map directly to a

direction on the five-way button.

Tradeoffs

The new five-way button adds a small amount of

cost to the device. It is more complicated then a

single push button, and some additional

programming work would be required for the

software applications to support the new button.

This new button might also be more susceptible

to damage, and be harder to replace. Finally if an

application designer decided to have more then 1

arrow pointing in the same direction (ie. Two left

arrows) then the five-way button does not help.

References

HE-12

HE-13

HE-23


Group 7 Page x

DESIGN CHANGE 2 Change Physical Button Icons

Problem

The physical button icons do not match the

applications they invoke.

Motivation

In the Think-Aloud as well as our heuristic

evaluation, the evaluators had a hard time

figuring out what many of the icons meant. For

this reason we wanted to change the icons to

better represent the meaning of the buttons

themselves.

For example the address book icon is a telephone;

however, the address book contains more than

just the telephone number. The applications icon

is a curved arrow; however, a curved arrow has

nothing to do with the applications menu itself.

The memo icon looks like a note pad being

written on; however, in our contextual inquiry the

user used post-its not a memo pad to make

notes.

Figure 26

Redesign

Change the icons for the physical buttons

“Applications”, “Address” and “Memo”, and

move the Application button to be inline with the

Address, Memo, and Date Book buttons. The

Calculator, To Do List, Find and Menu buttons are

moved to the toolbar above the graffiti area as

described in design change 3. The Applications

will become an icon of a Home. The Address


Group 7 Page xi

book becomes an icon of a business card, with

the outline of a profile on the left hand side and

text to the right of it. This is surrounded by a

rounded square. Memo becomes an icon of a

post-it that looks like a square with a folded

bottom right corner.

Justification

In the CI we saw the user often used post-it notes

to make quick notes to themselves. The memo

program serves a similar purpose in the Palm Pilot.

For this reason the new memo pad’s icon has

been redesigned to reflect the image of a Post-it.

The address book icon has been changed to that

of a business card because the business card

closer correlates to how the user uses the address

book application compared to that of the

telephone icon currently being used. The to-do

list was replaced by the applications/home button

because of the evidence from the think-aloud

which showed the heavy use of the applications

button in the completion of the task. The icon for

the applications menu has been changed to a

home to better reflect the mental model of the

user from the contextual inquiry data.

Tradeoffs

The trade-offs for this design change is that the

To Do List application is no longer available as a

physical button on the Palm Pilot. Another trade-

off is that the new icons, specifically for

application and for the memo application, may

not be as familiar to veteran users of the Palm

device.


Group 7 Page xii

References

HE-33

HE-49

TA-09

CI: user uses a post it, would understand a Post-it

like icon than the memo pad for writing notes &

memos.


Group 7 Page xiii

DESIGN CHANGE 3 Collapsible Graffiti Area

Problem

The Palm interface has limited screen space.

Motivation

In our UARs, a number of our design solutions

came with a tradeoff of clutter due to lack of

screen space. This issue could be fixed with the

ability to expand (Figure 27) and collapse the text

input area adding more screen space when

collapsed (Figure 28), as the graffiti/text input area

currently takes up a significant amount of space

on the interface (about 1/3).

Making the feature collapsible hides it out of view

and allows for more space for important content

when not in use. Currently, the keyboard takes up

most of the screen above the graffiti area when

activated, hiding the actual screen content the

user is trying to modify.

Figure 27

Redesign

We added a toolbar to the bottom of the screen

with an icon for graffiti in the right hand corner.

There is an up arrow directly above the “graffiti”

icon. The user can click on the arrow to expand

the graffiti area, which is now wider due to the

removal of the “Application”, “Calculator”,

“Menu” and “Find” buttons. (reduces visual

clutter). These buttons have been added to the

toolbar for easy access.


Group 7 Page xiv

The actual functionality of the graffiti and

keyboard application would work the same as in

the current palm. When expanded, the arrow

changes to a down arrow. The graffiti area would

stay expanded until the user chose to collapse it

again. To collapse, the user would click on the

down arrow. The default is set to collapse upon

turning the palm on.

Justification

The Palm’s screen is very small and therefore hard

to present information without becoming too

cluttered. The lack of adequate labeling or having

options visible on screens could be due to lack of

this screen space. Unfortunately, making the user

recall rather than recognize can make navigation

confusing to the user, per the heuristic of

Recognition vs, recall.

As we saw in the Think-Alouds and the CWs,

there are many areas where more information on

screen would have helped the user complete the

task. We try to solve this problem by expanding

the available screen size.

Tradeoffs

A frequent graffiti user will have to make one

extra step to pull up the graffiti screen. They have

the option is to keep it expanded, but this pushes

the screen content up, making information falling

below the fold available via scrollbars.

Figure 28


Group 7 Page xv

References

AE-HE-01

AE-HE-03

GP-HE-03

LN-HE-01

LN-HE-04


Group 7 Page xvi

DESIGN CHANGE 4 Label and Reposition Power Button

Problem

Power button is not labeled, and is located close

to physical “Date Book” button

Motivation

It is unclear that the button is for turning on and

off the Palm since it is not labeled.

The power button can be easily pressed by

accident when the users try to press the physical

“Date Book” button which is next to the power

button.

Redesign

The power button is labeled with a power icon as

show in Figure 29. The power icon used is the

same as found on the user’s laptop computer, a

Macintosh PowerBook, in the CI.

We also reposition the power button to top-right

corner, away from all the physical buttons but is

still easily accessible. We’ve also used a half-circle

shape for the button so that it is easy for users’

fingers to press it from the top.

Figure 29

Justification

Labeling the power button makes it clear it is a

power button; user is not confused about its


Group 7 Page xvii

function. The label is especially important for first-

time because they can learn about the button’s

function immediately when they’re exploring the

interface.

Repositioning the power button prevent it from

being accidentally pressed while user tries to press

other physical buttons, especially the Date Book

button which is right next to it. After the button is

moved to the top-right, it is still easily accessible,

but the chances that it is accidentally pressed will

be greatly reduced.

Tradeoffs

We anticipate no tradeoff for labeling the power

button.

The Palm case’s opening for the power button

needs to be changed to the top-right..

References

Labeling: HE-22

Repositioning: inspired by CI data, but not

motivated by UARs


Group 7 Page xviii

DESIGN CHANGE 5 Bubbled Meetings

Problem

Users do not immediately realize that events have

additional details, because there is no affordance

for clicking on the details button. No quick way to

determine the length of a meeting. While in the

week view, there is no way to edit or view the

details of a meeting.

Motivation

In our user testing, we noticed that the user rarely

found the details button. The participants could

not locate how to set up an alarm for a meeting

(TA-04) nor did they realize that a meeting with

out a label would be lost (TA-10). Events do not

demonstrate to the user that they can be clicked

on. Additionally, the details button (HE-20) is not

available when the user has not selected an event,

but is still clickable causing an error message to be

displayed when the user clicks on it. There is also

no large visual difference between an event that is

30 minutes long, and one that is 2 hours long

(HE-39).

Figure 30

Redesign

We will replace the text label of the event with a

rounded button that will look clickable. This

button will extend to the full length of the

meeting. (IE: cover the hours and events between

the start and end times). (Figure 30) These

bubbles will also apply to the week view, when a


Group 7 Page xix

week view “bubble” is clicked on, it will open up

the even details dialog.

Justification

By replacing the “text event name” with a button

that is labeled with the event name, we are

indicating to the user that it is clickable. When the

user clicks on the event, it brings up the event

details, therefore removing the requirement for a

details button. This would prevent some types of

user error (HE-20), and since the button looks

clickable, the user is more likely to click on it and

discover the alarm settings. The user is familiar

with button like event shapes from iCal which

was suggested from the CI data. In order to

provide users with a visualization of the length of

a meeting, the bubble will extend from the start

time to the end time, with out removing the

intervening hours. This will mean that the relative

length of a meeting will be illustrated.

We also constructed a KLM model of the task in

order to verify that bubbled meetings on the day

and week view improved performance. Using the

task given in the storyboard, we constructed our

models in CogTool. Since the original task was

designed for our new interface, a few

modifications to the task where required.

Specifically, the user makes no errors on the

delete event step, and as a simplification we left

the alarm at 5 minutes.

Below are the ACT-R traces for the original Palm


Group 7 Page xx

task, and the task with our new prototype.

Original Palm

(think) (look-at "datebook") (press-button "datebook") (think) (look-at "weekView") (press-button "weekView") (think) (look-at "12PMFriday") (press-button "12PMFriday") (look-at "-graffiti-") (press-button "-graffiti-") (graffiti-gesture) X 14 (think) (look-at "FridayDetails") (press-button "FridayDetails") (think) (look-at "time") (press-button "time") (think) (look-at "endTime") (press-button "endTime") (think) (look-at "2PM") (press-button "2PM") (think) (look-at "OKDetails") (press-button "OKDetails") (think) (look-at "eventDetailsok") (press-button "eventDetailsok") (think) (look-at "Monday") (press-button "Monday") (think) (look-at "ClickMeetWithSandy") (press-button "ClickMeetWithSandy") (think) (look-at "detailsFriday2alarm") (press-button "detailsFriday2alarm") (think) (look-at "deleteMondayEvent") (press-button "deleteMondayEvent") (think) (look-at "testcurrent") (press-button "testcurrent") (think) (look-at "friday2ndtime") (press-button "friday2ndtime") (think) (look-at "meetwithSandy2") (press-button "meetwithSandy2") (think) (look-at "detailsMeetWithSandy2") (press-button "detailsMeetWithSandy2") (think) (look-at "alarm") (press-button "alarm") (think) (look-at "OkAlarmDetails") (press-button "OkAlarmDetails") (think) (look-at "powerbutton2")


Group 7 Page xxi

(press-button "powerbutton2")

Prototype

(think) (look-at "datebook") (press-button "datebook") (think) (look-at "weekview") (press-button "weekview") (think) (look-at "newmeeting") (press-button "newmeeting") (think) (look-at "upGraffiti") (press-button "upGraffiti") (look-at "-graffiti-") (press-button "-graffiti-") (graffiti-gesture) X 14 (think) (look-at "endTime") (press-button "endTime") (think) (look-at "upArrow") (press-button "upArrow") (think) (look-at "SettimeOK") (press-button "SettimeOK") (think) (look-at "OkSetEvent") (press-button "OkSetEvent") (think) (look-at "clickOldMeeting") (press-button "clickOldMeeting") (think) (look-at "deleteMeet") (press-button "deleteMeet") (think) (look-at "DeleteCurrent") (press-button "DeleteCurrent") (think) (look-at "fridayMeeting") (press-button "fridayMeeting") (think) (look-at "alarm") (press-button "alarm") (think) (look-at "OkAlarm") (press-button "OkAlarm") (think) (look-at "powerbuton") (press-button "powerbuton")

The bolded sections on the original Palm are those

areas that are not needed under with the new

design. The remaining sections have logical

equivalents with the new design, and only

contribute improvements based on Fitts Law.


Group 7 Page xxii

Running CogTool with the ACT-R traces produces

the following run times.

Original: 49.956

Redesign: 37.991

This indicates a 20% improvement in

performance with our new design for this task.

Tradeoffs

The largest tradeoff with using a button for the

event, is that the space used by the button is

larger then that of a single line of text. If you have

a 2 hour meeting, and you create a few shorter

meetings during that meeting then, the apparent

length of the 2 hour meeting will be longer, since

“start times” will need to be entered for each of

the events that are with in the larger meeting.

This will cause the 2 hour meet to appear longer

then it is. Additionally, the users will need to scroll

more to see all meetings while in day view. More

scrolling will be required to navigate the complete

list of events. In the week view, the change to

have a single click bring up event details makes it

difficult to quickly read the week’s meeting titles

at a glance. The previous interface used a small

area at the top of the screen to provide the events

start time and name. Clicking on various bubbles

would change this “small area” with the various

details. The new version would require a single

click after seeing the details (to press ok), making

it slow to view numerous details from the week

view.

References

TA-04


Group 7 Page xxiii

TA-10

HE-20

HE-39

CI: ICal ( Video 5: 00:05-00:10, Line 260 )


Group 7 Page xxiv

DESIGN CHANGE 6 Application Menu

Problem

The title bar is not consistent and doesn’t have an

affordance for clicking.

Motivation

HE-17, HE-25, and HE-36 all describe similar

problems with the menu and title bar of Palm

applications. These problems consist of the

hidden drop down menu that appears when

clicking on the title bar. However, there is no

affordance for clicking. The other problem

described is lack of consistency with the title bar’s

text and the actual menu which appears once it is

clicked on. These two problems were the

motivation for changing the appearance and

affordances of the title bar.

Redesign

The menu at the top of the screen will change in

the following manner. The blue tab will contain

the name of the current application or window.

To the right of the application name there is a

down arrow. When the user clicks on the title bar

the application’s menu will appear below the title

bar

Figure 31

Justification

The redesigned title bar always contains the name

of the current application. This consistency fixes

the problem mentioned in HE-25 by having all


Group 7 Page xxv

title bars directly relate to the drop down menu

which they hide. The arrow next to the name of

the application in the title bar has been added to

resolve HE-17 and HE-36. The arrow does this by

both creating an affordance for the drop down

menu, as well as conforming to the drop down

menu standard of having an arrow to indicate the

presence of a drop down menu. By adding these

two features we have resolved the problems listed

in the given UARs.

Tradeoffs

There are many trade-offs with this change.

Perhaps the most prominent is the necessity to

change many applications which currently do not

display the title of the application in the title bar

area, such as the date book. In these applications,

a new location must be found to place the

information formerly kept in the title bar.

Another trade off is that the new title bar will be

wider due to the addition of the arrow for

affordance. If an application uses up the white

space to the right of the title bar, that space will

now be lost, and the data there will need to be

relocated. This relocation could be quite costly

and difficult to do in a clear way.

References

HE-17

HE-25

HE-36


Group 7 Page xxvi

DESIGN CHANGE 7 Consistent Help

Problem

Help is not consistently available on every screen.

Motivation

The current Palm interface does not have help

consistently available. The help that is available is

very limited and the icons are different

throughout. This violates the heuristics of Help

Documentation and Consistency and Standards.

Figure 32

Redesign

On every screen, we added a help icon in the

upper right hand corner of the screen, on the

same line as the application title. The icon is

designated (Figure 32) by a lowercase “i” in a

blue solid circle. We made the circle blue to keep

with the user’s mental model that solid blue

objects are clickable, and made the location of

the icon consistent on every screen for easy

access (heuristic of consistency and standards).

The “i” icon is one way the palm currently

displays help, so it should be fairly easy to

implement, and is consistent with expert palm

user’s experience finding help. Tapping on the

icon would open up a new help window, with

content-specific tips and assistance. The name of

the new window would be “Help”.


Group 7 Page xxvii

Justification

As we saw in the Think-Aloud and CWs, there

are many places that the user may come across

problems in navigating the interface and

completing their tasks. It is important to have

help available at all times to the user. We added

a help icon consistently on every screen in each

application to aid the user in troubleshooting.

This change matches our theme of consistency

and user control. Making the help visually

consistent and universally available also matches

the heuristics of User Control and Freedom,

Consistency and Standards, Error Prevention, and

Help Documentation.

Tradeoffs

The “Help” icon will be located on the upper

right hand corner of each screen. Some of the

applications currently have a category menu or

other feature in this space. It will have to be

moved down, pushing down the page content.

References

HE-26

HE-27


Group 7 Page xxviii

DESIGN CHANGE 8 All Times of Day Made Available in Date Book

Problem

Unclear about how to find a time outside the

default time range in “Day view” inside Date

Book.

Motivation

In the Think-Aloud, the user had trouble finding a

time, 6:50am, which is outside a day’s default

range of times, 8am to 6pm.

Redesign

In our redesign, we make all the times of a day

available, from 12am to 12pm; users can go to a

time outside the default range, 8am to 6pm, by

scrolling using a scrollbar which is always available

on the right edge of the screen, as shown in

Figure 33.

Justification

Users will find it intuitive to go to a time outside

8am to 6pm because there is a natural mapping

that scrolling up reveals earlier times, while

scrolling down reveals later times.

Figure 33

Tradeoffs

The scrollbar uses up some space on the right

edge of screen; the space for putting in meeting

descriptions will become narrower.


Group 7 Page xxix

References

TA-02


Group 7 Page xxx

DESIGN CHANGE 9 Time & Battery Life Indicators

Problem

The current time and battery life are not visible at

all times.

Motivation

The Palm Pilot runs on batteries, when these

batteries die, the Palm Pilot runs the risk of loosing

all of its data (Breakdown from CI). Unfortunately,

the battery indicator is not visible at all times (HE-

31) so when your battery life is getting low it is

easy to not notice, and potentially loose all of your

data. Additionally some users use their Palm Pilot

like a watch (Team member Alex Eiser). For these

users, the fact that the time is not visible at all

times is an aggravation. Additionally (HE-25) the

position of the time in the current design hides

the application (main screen) name, and when

clicked produces a menu unrelated to the time.

Redesign

In the toolbar (redesign idea 3) we will be adding

a battery life indicator, and a digital clock. (Figure

34) A secondary goal with this redesign is to

replace the memory used by the Palm with Flash

Memory.

Figure 34

Justification

In order to keep the system status (Battery and

time) available at all times, we are adding widgets

to the tool bar (redesign idea 3). These widgets


Group 7 Page xxxi

would be available at all times the palm is on, and

when click would provide additional information.

Clicking on the time (HE-25) brings up the set

time preference panel, while clicking on the

battery indicator shows the estimated amount of

life left in minutes or hours.

Replacing the Palm Memory with Flash memory

ensures that should the Palm completely run out

of battery power, no information will be lost.

Tradeoffs

The only tradeoff for the battery and time

indicator is that they take up space on the toolbar

that the user might want to use for selecting

other quick access applications. The new Flash

memory will increase the cost of the device, and

cause a very slight performance drop. The

increase in cost is marginal, as flash memory has

decreased significantly in cost over the last 5

years.

References

HE-25

HE-31


Group 7 Page xxxii

DESIGN CHANGE 10 Unify Scrolling Widget Appearances

Problem

Inconsistent icons for scrolling widgets

Motivation

Currently, some scrolling widgets are scrollbars

while the others are up and down arrows –

violates heuristic of consistency and standards.

See Figure 35 and Figure 36.

Redesign

The scrolling widget using up and down arrows

will be replaced by scrollbar. All scroll functionality

would use this widget.

Justification

Users will find it consistent that all scrolling is done

by scrollbars. The confusion about having two

widgets performing the same scrolling actions is

eliminated. We feel that scrollbar is preferred

because the users can tell their current position

relative to the whole document by looking at the

thumb (the movable part) on the scrollbar; up and

down arrows alone cannot offer the users this

visual cue.

Figure 35

Figure 36

Tradeoffs

Screens and dialogs of the applications that use

up and down arrows for scrolling have to be

updated. The screens and dialogs may look more


Group 7 Page xxxiii

crowded because scrollbars take up more space

than up and down arrows.

References

HE-24


Group 7 Page xxxiv

DESIGN CHANGE 11 “Name” Field Added to “New Event” Window

Problem

Labeless meetings are not saved if the user forgets

to enter to enter it into the day view screen.

Motivation

Currently in Date Book, the “New” button only

allows you to set times for a meeting, it does not

offer the user the option for entering the name

label of the event. In order to set a name, an extra

step is required. The only way to enter a name for

the meeting is to type it directly into the day view

window at the start time specified. If an event

name isn’t entered after creating a new event, the

meeting is not saved and disappears when the

user enters another meeting. There is no warning

that the meeting will be lost if this happens.

This violates several heuristics including Error

Prevention, Error Recovery and Recognition rather

than Recall.

Figure 37

Redesign

In our proposed “New event” screen we added a

field called “Name”. Next to the label, “Name”

we added a text box with a blinking cursor

indicating to the user that the field is editable

(Figure 37). The user can then use the keyboard or

graffiti to enter a name or description of their

meeting to distinguish it from other entries.

This name will also appear- and be editable- when


Group 7 Page xxxv

the user views event details. An error message

saying “Attention, you have not specified an

event name. Would you like to do so now?” The

user may choose to go back and edit the field or

leave it blank. There also is a check box “do not

show this message again” giving the user control

over whether they want to be reminded or not,

(H6 user control and freedom).

Justification

Adding the name option to the new event and

details screen keeps all event info in the same

window and serves as a visual reminder for the

user to enter the name at this time. We also

added a prompt if the user tries to save the

meeting without a label, but if they decline the

meeting is not lost. The labeless meeting is labeled

by default as “New Event”.

Tradeoffs

Does not allow expert users who may have

frequent 1 hr meetings, to type a name in quickly

into the day view, and adds an extra click to do

so.

References

TA-10

LN TA-07


Group 7 Page xxxvi

DESIGN CHANGE 12 ADD “CATEGORY” IN DATE BOOK

Problem

No means to categorizes meetings

Motivation

In the CI Artifact Model, user used different

notations – dotted and solid lines, short

mnemonic names – to describe different types of

meetings. Based on this data, we think this is a

good feature to be included in Date Book so that

users can categorize their meetings in a similar

way.

Redesign

Users can assign a category to a meeting when

they’re creating or editing the meeting, through a

drop-down menu in the “New Event”, or the

“Event Details” dialogs. Different categories will

have different colors. The color used by a category

is shown next to the category name at the drop-

down menu as a colored square, as shown in

Figure 38.

In the “Day view”, “Week view” and “Month

view” of the Date Book, the meetings will be

highlighted with colors corresponding to their

categories. Figure 39 and Figure 40 are examples

of “Day view” and “Week view”

Figure 38

Figure 39


Group 7 Page xxxvii

Justification

Users can better visualize how different types of

meetings are distributed across their time. This

can help them adjust and plan their meetings

easier.

Furthermore, the differentiation among the types

of meetings is improved by their different colors.

Tradeoffs

The screen may look visually distracting after

adding colors for the meetings.

Figure 40

References

CI Artifact Model


Group 7 Page xxxviii

DESIGN CHANGE 13 Split Event Time into Two Pieces

Problem

The Think-Aloud user did not see the end time in

the set time dialog, and the buttons and functions

in the set time dialog do not match the standard

Palm interface.

Motivation

In the set time dialog, the fact that the end time is

clickable (HE-19,HE-21) is not immediately

obvious. Thus, the user did not realize that he

could set the end time (TA-08). When the end

time is not set, it is more difficult to determine the

length of meetings. If you have multiple meetings,

some set for 1 hour, some for 2 hours and others

for 30 minutes and you do not set the end time

correctly then it is difficult to determine when you

are supposed to be in a meeting, or when you are

free. Additionally the user can not specify a start

or end time in smaller then 5 minute increments

(HE-07).

Redesign

We are splitting the Time field in the event details

dialog into both a start and an end time. (Figure

41) We are using a standard dialog to set the

time. All applications that want to set a date &

time should use this standard dialog.

Figure 41


Group 7 Page xxxix

Justification

Splitting the time field on the event dialog into

two sections will ensure that the user sees the end

time, and allow us to make the fact you can set

the end time more obvious. This will solve both

HE-19 and HE-21. Since the start and end times

are separate and clearly visible, the user will be

able to see them more clearly preventing. This will

prevent the problem illustrated from the Think-

Aloud (TA-08) where the user never saw the end

time functionality. The new set time dialog lets

the user specify times to the minute. Since the

interface resembles setting an alarm clock, it will

be simple for the user to use. Graffiti can also be

used to quickly set the time instead of using the

up and down arrows.

Tradeoffs

This would require more time for the user to set

the start & end time because they would need to

navigate multiple dialogs. The new set time dialog

will take a little extra time for users who are not

experienced with Graffiti.

References

HE-19

HE-21

TA-08


Group 7 Page xl

DESIGN CHANGE 14 Warning for contextual mistakes

Problem

The user is not warned when they make

contextual mistakes.

Motivation

In the Think-Aloud the user forgets to set the label

of an upcoming meeting as well as the end time

of the meeting. When the user is unable to do

this, they show signs of dissatisfaction or simply

skip the step of setting the end time. In the

Think-Aloud the user does this in two different

ways. The user forgets to set the label of a

meeting and it is lost. In the other instance the

user forgets to set the end time for a meeting and

instead of setting it correctly, the user simply adds

it to the name of the meeting itself.

Figure 42

Redesign

When the user makes a mistake which is unique

to a particular part of the interface, such as not

putting in an end time for an event which does

not last all day, the system alerts the user to that

mistake they have made and gives them

information about the default settings as well as

methods of fixing the contextual mistake. The

dialog box gives the user the ability to accept the

default setting or correct the mistake, giving both

help and educating to prevent future errors. The

text in the message has the connotation that a

mistake, not an error has been made. Utilizing

the heading of “Attention” instead of the header


Group 7 Page xli

“Error”, or “Warning”, lets the user know that

the mistake is not fatal and that there are non-

intimidating ways to correct the problem.

Justification

By giving alert messages that help and inform the

user to their mistakes at the time that it is made, it

reduces the likelihood of the user making the

same mistake again. This method also alerts the

user of the other options they have to correct the

mistake when it is made instead of just that it

occurred. This will ensure that the user does not

become confused as they did during the Think-

Aloud. It is also important that the user is made

aware of both the defaults as well as methods of

correcting the mistake incase the default setting is

not desired. This also assists in making the user

aware of parts of the event properties that they

might not have been aware of previously.

Tradeoffs

The trade-offs with this change is that a user who

makes a mistake will be required to read a

message and make an extra click, which was not

required earlier. This could be annoying for

veteran users who might not want to always set a

particular end time or label meetings. It will also

require the addition of numerous dialog boxes to

inform the user to the mistake they are making in

the particular context.

References

TA-08 TA-10


Group 7 Page xlii

DESIGN CHANGE 15 “All Day” and “No Time” Options in “New Event” Window

Problem

The “All Day” and “No Time” options are not

specific to a start or end time.

Motivation

According to our HE-53, the “All Day” and “No

Time” buttons allow the user the freedom to add

events that may not have set start or end times.

The Palm currently has the “All Day” and “No

Time” options within “Set Time”.

Redesign 13 splits up the start and end times into

2 separate options- bringing you to separate

windows to set each time.

Because the all day meetings and ones with no

specified times have no start or end times, it

wouldn’t make sense to place those options in

either or both of those windows. As a solution,

we moved “All Day” and “No Time” as options

for meeting time in the “New Event” screen.

Figure 43

Redesign

In the “New Event” window, we added buttons

for setting the time for an event. The options are

now “Set time”, “All Day” and “No Time”

(Figure 43).

When the user taps on “Set Time” the start and

end time boxes are editable. When tapping on

“All Day” or “No Time”, the button changes to


Group 7 Page xliii

blue (highlight color), and the start and end time

options are grayed out and un-clickable.

Justification

In the current Palm, the “All Day” option is only

available in the “Details” window. Since most

people know that they have an all day meeting

before they set the meeting, we felt it was more

intuitive to place that option in the “New Event”

window.

Tradeoffs

The addition of these two options adds more

visual clutter to the “New Event” screen.

References

HE-53


Group 7 Page xliv

DESIGN CHANGE 16 Can Undelete a Meeting in Date Book

Problem

Undo doesn’t allow user to undelete meetings.

Motivation

Accidentally deleting a meeting isn’t rare, and its

impact is big because users cannot undelete it.

However, currently, “Undo” doesn’t allow users

to undo this mistake; they can only undelete

characters.

Redesign

Undo will allow user to undelete a meeting as

well as deleted characters.

Justification

Being able to undelete a meeting, users will being

able to recover from their error. They will also

have a better user experience when using Date

Book because they will be less worried when they

need to decide whether to delete a meeting (since

they can recover it later).

Tradeoffs

The Palm may need more memory to store the

deleted meetings for possible future recovery.

Figure 44

References

HE-05

HE-41


Group 7 Page xlv

DESIGN CHANGE 17 Alphabetically Sorted Lists

Problem

Lists used in Palm applications are not always

sorted.

Motivation

Sorted lists are easier to navigate, HE-42 points.

Redesign

Ensure that all lists are sorted where appropriate.

Justification

Sorted lists are easier to navigate and find items

that you want. This can be observed through the

perception and memory phenomenon. Sorting

the list will cause the items to be grouped by the

first letter. This helps improve the performance of

serial search, and speeds up the time required to

locate an item.

Tradeoffs

No negative tradeoff is apparent for this change

besides some programming effort.

References

HE-42

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page xlvi

B1. UARs from HE

Consolidated UARs

UAR No. Combined Aspect Statement

Heuristics violated

Individuals referenced

HE-01 Uses Technical Jargon Beam, Beam Receive, Available Configurations are not clearly

defined in the user's language. EX: users may think Beam

means to smile with joy, not to send data.

Match AE-HE-1

LN-HE-07

GP-HE-06

HE-02 Delete Contacts Can't delete people in Address Book easily. There is no button

in the main contact window, or edit window to delete a user.

You need to use a menu item or button in the details dialog.

Recognition AE-HE-02

HE-03 Calculator Title Bar Can't access menu from top and there is no title bar

Consistency

Visibility

AE-HE-03

GP-HE-12

CY-HE-15

DC-HE-03

LN-HE-02

HE-04 Show Button "To Do" application's show button brings up preferences.

Users may be confused because the dialog box's name is not shown.

Consistency AE-HE-05

CY-HE-04

HE-05 Undo/redo There is no redo, and undo does not work correctly. Undo only

lets the user recover from a single destructive text operation.

Freedom AE-HE-6

HE-06 Edit Contact Address Book: Edit contact has to much going on. Numerous

options, and settings are in the edit contact window. Users may

be confused what different options mean, and they are

restricted on the number of options they can add.

Aesthetic AE-HE-07

HE-07 5 Minute Minimum Date book: Can't set start time at a finer level than 5 minutes.

Ex: Users may have meetings or appointments that start in between 5:30 & 5:35

Match Freedom

AE-HE-08 CY-HE-12

HE-08 New "To Dos" Date book: Appointment view: Can't create new To Dos, or

appointments. The user might want to add a similar "To Do"

to one listed in appointment view, but must leave the view to

go to the "To Do" application.

Consistency

Freedom

AE-HE-09

GP-HE-18

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page xlvii

HE-09 Too Many Types Expense: Too many choices in the Type dropdown. Users may

have a difficult time finding the best type for their expense

item.

Aesthetic AE-HE-11

HE-10 Address Lookup Expense: Address lookup doesn't work unless the user has

entered a company. The interface does not inform the user of this requirement. The user might want to charge items to

people without being in a company, and does not understand

why they don't show up.

Prevention AE-HE-12

HE-11 Custom Type Expense: The user cannot specify their own types for expense

records.

Freedom AE-HE-1

CY-HE-06

HE-12 Set Time Arrows The arrows have different effect on how and what they alter.

EX: Clicking the same up arrow changes both the Hour and the

Minute.

Consistency CY-HE-01

CYC-HE-06 GP-HE-03

HE-13 Arrow Mapping Up down on Device, maps to left right in application. EX: Up

Down buttons on physical device act like left and right arrows

in the Date Book application.

Consistency

Match

CY-HE-02

CYC-HE-09

HE-14 No Preference Menu Item The "To Do" application has no menu item for preferences, yet

when you click "show…" it brings up a preference dialog.


HE-15 No Menu Items Date Book's Appointment view has no menu.


HE-16 Navigation Arrows Placement of navigation arrows is not consistent in different

applications.


HE-17 Hidden Menu

No visible indication there is a menu behind any title bars.

Recognition CY-HE-08

GP-HE-10

HE-18 Misuse of color Same color blue is used for Static and dynamic labels. I.E. Some labels are blue and can be clicked to get more information,

others cannot.


HE-19 Single Click A single click has an immediate action instead of confirming

selection.

Visibility

Prevention

CY-HE-10

GP-HE-02

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page xlviii

HE-20 Unavailable Commands Details, delete, and other command buttons are shown when

they are not available.

Prevention CY-HE-11

GP-HE-8

GP-HE-17

GP-HE-22 CYC-HE-03

CYC-HE-04

CYC-HE-08

HE-21 Set Time Text Box The set time text box does not act like a normal text box. Can

type in time, but does not display text entry. EX: You type in 5

3 5 and the time is set to 5:35. However you cannot undo or

delete the 5, nor can you see what is set. So if you type in 5 3 3, you will not get any indication why your second 3 did not

have an effect.

Consistency

Visibility

CY-HE-13

GP-HE-19

LN-HE-08

HE-22 Power Button Power button is not labeled

Recognition CY-HE-14

HE-23 Physical Device Arrows In Date Book, the physical up down buttons perform different

actions then they do in other applications. EX: In most

applications, the up down buttons let you scroll up and down.

In the Date Book they let you change the day/week/month.


HE-24 Scroll Bars Scroll bar icons are inconsistent. Ex: Some times the scroll bar is an actual scroll bar, other times they are up and down arrows.


LN-HE-09

HE-25 Time Hides Unrelated Menu Clicking on the time on the home screen brings up an

unrelated menu.

Consistency

Match

LN-HE-03

CYC-HE-01

HE-26 HELP! Help not always available in every application. No icon or help

button is visible in many areas.

Help LN-HE-04

GP-HE-01

HE-27 Help Icons Help icons inconsistent. Some times the graphical letter I is

used, in other case it’s a "help" button. The window that pops

up is called HINTS.

Consistency LN-HE-05

HE-28 Find is Inconsistent Find is inconsistent with users expectations. The find function does not find applications or help. IE: Users familiar with

windows would expect the find to discover applications AND

records. NOTE: Help is not searchable.

Consistency LN-HE-06

HE-29 No Exit You can't exit from certain applications like Welcome and the

Freedom LN-HE-10

GP-HE-07

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page xlix

digitizer. CYC-HE-10

DC-HE-02

HE-30 No End Times Date book's Appointment view: Doesn't show end times for

appointments. The user must edit the appointment or switch views to see end time.

Recognition LN-HE-12

HE-31 Battery And Time Indicator Applications do not display the battery or current time.

Visibility LN-HE-01

HE-32 Inconsistent Title Bar The Date Book's title bar has an inconsistently date display.

There are 4 different views, and each view has a slightly

different date format.

Consistency DC-HE-01

HE-33 Address book Icon Home screen's icon for addressor book does not have a real

world match for the text of address.

Match DC-HE-04

HE-34 Delete Dialog The dialog messages for delete actions sometimes use Yes and

No, others use Ok/Cancel


CYC-HE-02

HE-35 Delete Button Name

Some delete buttons are labeled "Delete" others are "Delete…" Ex: Expense uses Delete, "To Do" uses Delete…


HE-36 Drop Down Menu Drop down menus do not conform to standard. Most users

expect that drop down menus have a down arrow next to

them. It's also a palm pilot convention. Ex: The Address book

has a drop down without the arrow.


GP-HE-11

HE-37 Find Dialog Find does not allow the user to specify which application the

find is carried out in. Forces user to search in all applications

Freedom DC-HE-08

HE-38 Find Results Find result shows categories that have no match.

Aesthetic DC-HE-09

HE-39 Time Visualization

In the Date Book, the relative amount of time an event is, is not visualized in the day view. Ex: You cannot tell if an

appointment is an hour, or three hours at a glance.

Match

Recognition

CYC-HE-05

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page l

HE-40 Change Date Arrow The change date arrows in the Date Book, do not always

change the same thing. EX: In the day view, the right arrow

advances a week, and in the week view, the right arrow still

advances a week. The month view, advances by a month.

Consistency CYC-HE-06

HE-41 Undo Delete Record

The user cannot undo a deleted record. The user can only revert to an archived version. The archive is stored on a

computer.

Freedom

Diagnose

CYC-HE-07

HE-42 Unsorted Lists - Drop down menus are not always sorted alphabetically when appropriate.

Consistency GP-HE-04

GP-HE-05

HE-43 Command Buttons Placement of common command buttons are not consistent in

different applications.


HE-44 Contact Lookup The look up functionality forces you to only enter letters in

prefix notation for the user's last name or company name. Ex: If

you have a contact with last name Eiser, and first name Alex, you can only enter an E in look up, not Alex, or any other letter

besides E. You can type in Eiser, but each letter must match.

Freedom GP-HE-09

HE-45 New Button The new button in Expense does not show a new "form"

screen. It simply adds a new "record" row. This is contrary to

every other included application.


HE-46 No Cancel Applications do not let you cancel your changes. For example

the expense application does not let you cancel making

changes to the attendees.

Freedom GP-HE-14

HE-47 Save As Draft There is no button in the Mail application to save an email as a

draft. You can only save as a draft by canceling the email,

which brings up a dialog asking if you want to do so.

Recognition GP-HE-15

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page li

Good UARs

UAR No. Combined Aspect Statement Heuristics

Individuals

referenced

HE-48 Accelerators Short cuts are available for almost all actions. Efficiency AE-HE-09

HE-49 View Applications The home screen shows all available applications. Recognition LN-HE-11

HE-50 Customize Buttons The user can customize each physical button to launch a

different application. Efficiency DC-HE-10

HE-51 Today Button The today button allows quick access to the current day. Recognition CYC-HE-11

HE-52 Escape Delete Ability to escape delete options and save the archived copy.

Freedom

Consistency

GP-HE-20

CY-HE-18

Rejected UARs

Combined Aspect Statement Reason Individuals referenced

Case Sensitive Find- Find is case sensitive

Find is not case sensitive. Alex made

an error on his analysis; he incorrectly used the find system.

AE-HE-04

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page lii

B2. UARs from CW

Consolidated UARs

UAR No. Description

LN-CW-01 Detail button doesn’t not indicate alarm setting capabilities

CYC-CW-01 “Set Time” window is unrelated with the label of “New”.

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page liii

B3. UARs from TA

Consolidated UARs

UAR No. Combined Aspect Report Evidence (Video Time) Individuals Referenced

TA-01 Datebook text labeless User hesitates before deciding pressing the datebook button is the correct action.

V1 - 01:11 ~ 01:27 CYC-TA-01

TA-02 All Times not visible

User is confused on how to set the time outside of the default

V1 - 01:31~ 03:16 C YC-TA-02, DC-TA-03, LN-TA-01, CY-TA-03

TA-03 No Back button The user hesitates to find a way to get back to the previous page.

V2 - 03:05 ~ 03:14 CYC-TA-04

TA-04 Alarm Setup

User does not succeed in finding and setting the alarm in the given task

V2 - 0:53 ~ 1:20, 1:22 ~ 1:36, 1:39 ~ 8:56, 8:58~9:02, 9:04~9:12, 9:12~10:00

CYC-TA-05, LN-TA-03, AE-TA-03, DC-TA-02, CY-TA-08, GP-TA-04

TA-05 Preference Confusion User is unsure to the context of the Preferences application.

V2(01:38 ~ 02:05) V2(00:01:48)- V2(00:02:09), V2(00:06:29), V2(00:06:40-07:59)

CYC-TA-06, LN-TA-06, CY-TA-02, AE-TA-05, GP-TA-05

TA-06 Set Time Graffitiless User is unable to set the time using graffiti.

V2 - 02:18 ~ 02:34 CYC-TA-07

TA-07 No Exit - The user is unable to exit the welcome

screen/digitizer.

V2 - 09:12 ~ 10:12 CYC-TA-08, LN-TA-05, DC-TA-06, CY-TA-01, GP-TA-06

TA-08 Set End Time Not Clear Once the user sets the start time the end time changes automatically. The user does not notice that he can change it.

Video 1 00:04:37- 00:04:41, 00:04:57 - 00:05:21

LN-TA-02, GP-TA-03, DC-TA-05, CYC-TA-03, CY-TA-05, AE-TA-03

TA-09 Datebook Icon

The Datebook icon is clearly visible on the screen and is consistant with the users mental model of a datebook.

V1 01:11 - 01:30 LN-TA-04, DC-TA-04

TA-10 Labeless Meetings Not Saved

When user creates a meeting without a label, and then creates a second meeting, the first meeting is lost.

V1 04:03-04-25; V1 04:31 - 04:55

LN-TA-07, CY-TA-04, DC-TA-01, AE-TA-02, GP-TA-02

TA-11 Preference Label Confusion Labels in preferences are unclear

V2-03:14-03:24, V2 - 04:03-04:16

CY-TA-06, CY-TA-07

TA-12 Meeting instead of Alarm

The user attempts to create a meeting at 6:50

V1 0:27-1:30, 3:27-4:24 AE-TA-01

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page liv

instead of setting an alarm to 10 minutes before 7.

TA-13 No Click Affordance for Time

The time in the day view has no affordance for it being clicked to create a new event.

V1 2:49 - 3:00, 3:13-3:42 GP-TA-01

APPENDICES

Group 7 Page 55

B1. Newly Added UAR

GP- HE-53 Problem/Good Aspect: good Name: Datebook allows users to set non time specific meetings Evidence Heuristic: H7 Flexibility and Efficiency of Use Interface Aspect:

The set time window contains an all day button that allows the user to set an all day meeting and a no time button to signify a meeting with unknown start and end times.

Explanation: Users may have events that last all day. Because they want that time to be blocked off, they could enter a meeting that lasts from 8-6 , but just clicking on the all day icon is a more efficient way to set the time. If the user is unsure of an end time, the user is not required to enter one, they can just click on no time. This allows for a quick way to list events without blocking off any time. Benefit: Allows an quick and efficient way to list an all day or unspecified time meeting. Possible solution and/or trade-offs: The all day meeting defaults to 8-6, even if earlier meetings are scheduled, unless user specifies otherwise within preferences. Relationships:

No relationship apparent at this time.

Palm Redesign Retrospective of Techniquesdchau/files/palm_redesign.pdfthe user’s mental model,...

Documents

Transcript of Palm Redesign Retrospective of Techniquesdchau/files/palm_redesign.pdfthe user’s mental model,...