Final Video Animatic

From the 29 pictures in our storyboard (which seemed a bit much so I will not post it to the blog), came this amazing animatic that will be used as the template for our prototype video.

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.

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:

        

Storyboard

The Storyboard ready!
We worked on the storyboard until the wee hours of the night, mainly because the amazing artist Guy Mofaz is the owner of a bar, and to gain precious time we met him at the bar.

here is the animated version of the storyboard:

Here is the user scenario of Stepolls (note the beautiful drawings):

Town Hall from afar

Zoom into one window at a meeting of the municipal see, see the mayor of Tel Aviv (Ron Huldai) asks the members of the town "How do we incorporate the public in this decision?"

One of the members goes up to the mayor of the municipality and answers: "Like in the past, we will return the discourse to the street."

Sharp transition to the street

The resident looks at Stepolls from afar and all he can see is a crowd of people around a large screen.

The resident comes closer, and sees a question, a video, and diagrams on the screen. In addition, he sees people who are standing next to keyboards and typing, as well as a person who is pressing a button.

 The resident approaches the screen, and clearly see the question.  He watches the video, and so realize the the buttons have "for" and "against" written on them, in accordance with the diagrams on the screen.

The resident begins to talk to people who are standing around the keyboards, and he realizes that they are expressing their opinions on the issue, and that what they are typing appears on the big screen.

Resident writes his own opinion, and you can see that what he writes on the keyboard also appears on the screen.

The resident goes  towards the voting buttons in order to vote.

The resident votes.

The resident is sitting at a cafe and checking the results of the vote using his cell phone.

This is an animated version of the storyboard:

Concept Pitch Video

To prepare for the "speed-dating", our group met up and Lidor pretended we were a mentor.  This is one of his last practice runs.