Final Design

As was decided before, the digital system will be in the form of a cube with four active faces:

Face1 - informative video + textual information about a topic

Face 2 - Opinion videos recorded by residents

Face 3 - Video camera to record one's opinion on the issue

Face 4 - Two physical buttons, red and green, to vote for and against the issue.

The cube is placed on the street on a stand (see diagram attached) that holds the cube and allows it to turn 360 degrees without the user having to hold it in their hands. Above the cube, a question will be displayed, most likely in print format. The columns that support the cube will have LED lights that will light up after a user votes to show the current voting state.

From Pillar to Cube

After seeing the many interaction problems with the pillar, especially with the lack of touchscreen, we decided that we can't ignore the calls to change how the product will work.

We decided to move away from the pillar idea to something else (again).

We brainstormed many ideas, from Dance Dance Revolution type interaction to Hyde Park.

In the end we went back to the idea of the voice carrying weight.  We took the idea of a balance

The main interaction will be with a cube.  Four of its sides will have touchscreens (tablets), with one being for information, the second to listen to public opinion, the third to record one's opinion, and a possible fourth function.  The vote will be done by placing the cube on one side of the balance.  When the cube is placed, the balance will show the current voting conditions.

Below are some basic models of the cube.

User Study 3: Paper Prototype

We took our product to the streets!

In order to understand how to characterize the product: what buttons to use, where to place them, etc., we decided to test the product on people.

The test was done at the IDC, because we knew that most students are opinionated and that we can learn learn a lot from any opinion they may give us.

The test was very successful! We were glad to hear that people like the idea and are waiting to use it in real life, and more were glad that we learned a lot about the interaction of users with the product.

Here is a short video of the test:

Below are some questions that arose from watching the interactions:

* Is it right to decide that the amount of time a user is interacting with the system affects the level of the weight of his voice? If so, we should think about making it in a way that the use would intuitively understand.  At the beginning of the interaction, it should show that the amount of time they are going to invest in has a direct effect on their vote.

RFID tag -

As mentioned, the tag is supposed to signal that the user started his route to the front page, and help us to measure the amount of time they used the system, as a way to indicate the amount of time they had invested in learning about the issue, and thus calculate the weight of their vote. The idea is that a user who has taken more time to learn about the issue, listen to pubic opinion, and record their thoughts knows more about the issue, and so should have their vote count more.

Examination revealed a number of advantages and disadvantages in the existence of the RFID tag.

 Pros:

Many respondents indicated that this tag would go with them from voting ballot, and will be part of their keychain, thus creating a sense of commitment and a community between people to whom expressing their opinion on their surroundings is important. The tag may cause an emotional connection.

Some suggested that the tag will be used for things other than voting, for example, instead of plain tags, they will contain personal information, like resident identification.

Cons:

Some respondents felt the chip very redundant in the interaction.

We realized that the tag requires the presence of a stewardess/machine in order to give the tag to people who had not received it elsewhere. Because this process requires a registration system, it may be cumbersome.

Buttons -

We noted that, without exception, users intuitively thought that the screed was a touchscreen. 

The fact that the screen is untouchable (because the screen is inside a glass "wrapper"), incurs a significant drawback. It seems that people are so used to touch screens, and we realized that maybe we should think about changing the form to one that contains touch interaction.

Disregarding that fact, here are the conclusions regarding the different buttons:

Informative Screen: 

A green triangle-PLAY, which everyone understood intuitively

Opinion Screen:

- No need for up/down arrows, just right, left and enter.

- Middle button - don't make it a square.  Some said that square reminds them of STOP, maybe do a green triangle in the middle of the screen as a piece of paper and right and left arrows << >>.

- In the future, this screen will not be in a loop. The two options, record yourself and view opinions, should have segments that correspond to the weight of that part of the process.  For example, if recording the opinion is more important, it should have a larger space.

- Some of the subjects felt it was important to see their recording before deciding to have everyone be able to see it.

- When watching public opinions, many subjects thought it would be helpful to know some personal information about the speaker, such as age.

Voting Screen:

- It is not clear yet how to vote - if we decide to go with the RFID tag, we need to make sure that there is a way to intuitively understand that it should be used as a voting tool.

- Are red and green for and against confusing for the user.  They could be confused with the PLAY and RECORD buttons.

In the end we learned a lot from the paper prototype, and still have many issues to solve in regards to the interaction.

RFID

Because we want the system to be able to recognize the amount of time a user spent on the system, we thought of using RFID tags, like these ones:

Since we want to check the amount of time a user spends in front of our product, the RFID tags can be checked in at the beginning, and at every station.  At the end, the amount stations tagged would calculate the weight of the vote.

These tags will stay with the person, and go with them from vote to vote.

Tweaking the Idea

Coming back from semester break, we realized we had a lot of small tweaks to the system to make the interaction more intuitive.
After much thought, we decided that it was important to have some sort of indication of the level of a user's investment. Today, in a world where everything is fast, we do not think as deeply about things, mainly because we feel that we do not have the time.
We decided to use a user's interaction level to indicate the extent of their involvement, and through that, calculate the weight of the total votes. It makes no sense for one who chose to read the issue, watch public opinion and shoot video of his thoughts and someone who chose only to vote should have their vote carry the same weight.
In practice, we decided that some have measured the amount of time the user is interacting with the product, once it starts to consume the information until the moment when he chooses to vote. Time indication will be the extent of involvement.
In addition, we realized that it is important that the user go through some sort of process while interacting with our product, so that it is clear that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. We decided to paint the floor around the track with the Board, the user marks where the process starts and where it ends.
So we thought back to the metaphor of a voting booth that you are going through a process, after which you vote on your choice.
We thought about adding a small printer at the point where the interaction begins. The user gets a piece of paper that continues with them throughout the entire process.  At the end of the process, the user can vote by inserting the paper into the voting slot, which will be part of the pillar.

The following is a drawing of our idea (bird's eye view)

Concept Presentation

Today we had a concept presentation at the Microsoft Accelerator with the four other groups.

Our presentation went really well.  A link to the presentation slides can be found here.

Here is the presentation at Microsoft:

We got some very constructive criticism.  The main one was about the stand we want to use.  The circular advertisement stand, they said, takes up more space than we can use, since we want to use LCD screens inside (as per our past posts).  The circular shape might put a barrier between people, and since discussion is one of the main reasons to put a physical stand rather than use an app, hindering conversation is one thing we don't want to do.

Spock commented on the possibility of vandalism when recording public opinion, and that a recorded video might be very embarrassing.  Also, he thinks that maybe listening to others' opinions will skew the resuts.

Henit asked about time aspect: how long does the user have to stand in front of the system?  This is important because we don't want to miss the votes of people who don't have much time.  Also, she recommends that if we continue with recording the public's opinion, that the person who recorded their idea gets some credit for what they added to the discourse, like an option to put his video on Facebook.  She also suggested we let people post their opinions from home.

Gilat also talked about the time aspect of our device.  She suggested doing a user study to figure out what is the minimum time needed to get all the information.  She added that it is important to remember that not all issues are for and against, and that some of the issues might be between two options.

Amiel loved the idea of the public opinion video clips.  He told us to consider presenting the information in another way rather than video, such as static text.

concept video: behind the scenes + the video

We worked hard on the concept video.  There's no doubt that it was fun. 

 Here is the final product:

Behind the scenes: