Paper Prototype
First of all,we developped a paper prototype, that we tested on users. There we got one central hint: In our paperprototype we decided to let the user do the MAGER-settings as a part of the handy-settings. But our users told us, that this is not intuitiv, and that they would prefer a special setting area intergrated in the MANGER software.1. Flash Prototype
Here is our Flash-Prototyp2. Flash Prototype
Here is our second Flash-Prototyp, resulting of this evaluation:Evaluation without users
Keep the interface simple
MANGER should be used by all kinds of people not just by technique freaks. So we decided to outsource the configuration of our program to a phone-center. On the one hand we can earn our money like this, and on the other hand many elderly people (for who MANGER is especially interesting because they often suffer on diabetes) have problems with devices like mobile phones. So our MANGER just has to display information, and the user just can navigate through these data.Speak the users' language
We tried to do so. We do not speak about folders containing files containing the meals, but about different types of meals like you find on every normal menu. We tried to project a menu on the mobile phone, plus some extra information.Be consistent and predictable
We have always choosen red colour to mark the actual item. We have chosen this colour because you can easily see this on a small screen At this point we noticed one inconsistency: The Settings do not use this colour coding. We will change it.Provide feedback
We provide feedback to MANGER-user, every user can find easily where they are or what they are doing. The first line of display shows the user the doing task.Minimize memory load
Some special skills or trainings need not to use MANGER, because the informations what MANGER shows the user are useful just one time and MANGER shows the information in same frame. As we see in part of "Keep the interface simple", using MANGER is not difficult.Avoid errors, help to recover, offer undo
In every step of MANGER the user can find a 'back' function because it offers 'undo'. The users can go to the previos step whenever they want. The information of MANGER is almost for the one time and the user needs not save it. Hence MANGER offers no function of recovering in software. But the users can recover( or change their configurations via telephone).Design clear exits and closed dialogs
There is no possibility to go to upper level now in MANGER. MANGER just offers to undo the previous steps(multiple undo). To quite MANGER at all, you can use the mobile phones back key. We will give an additional example for this in the prototype.Include help and documentation & Offer shortcuts for experts
We offer no documentation and shortcuts for experts, because MANGER is made for users who have no specified knowledge and it is also quite a simple software.Evaluation with users
As our test subject we chose Caroline, who already took part in our user interviews.
For the test she operated the flash prototype sitting in front of her own computer at her place, while one of us was sitting next to her, observing and listening. We decided it would be better to have just one observer to avoid stress and be less intrusive.
Caroline uses her handy regularly so we thought, she wouldn't have any problems operating our prototype. Unfortunatelly we were wrong. She had big problems using our two-dimensional model of a handy and said so. She said, it would be easier to operate, if you could actually move the joystick we couldn't offer. Since this problem will solve itself, once we port the software to it's target-platform we think we can ignore this.
As a task for Caroline, we asked her to see what kinds of salad would be eatable for her and she found them without any problems (the only problems she had were how to use the "handy" as we mentioned earlier).
Caroline was quite surprised by the fact that the software lets her select "Restaurant Information" and then tells her there is no restaurant, if none is available, we should make this recognizable earlier, so you don't have to enter the restaurant information just to find out there is no restaurant.