Category: team NUdc (17/18)

week 10 NUDC: User Testing

Hello Again,

This week we had meetings with our stakeholder, Ali Lamb, as well as our technical adviser and academic mentor. Before they started testing our prototype, there were a few points we had to mention; the fact that they keyboard was not fully functioning, only an image, there were aspects we already knew we wanted to add such as the ‘rating other comments’ page and we also asked the users to think a loud throughout their testing. During our meeting with Ali, she noticed some alterations we could make to further improve our prototype, but also the details that she liked, for example the fact that the reward sticker reinforces brand identity for Streets 4 People. Her suggestions for improvement included changing the language we used on our introduction page from “there will be” to “one idea is” to suggest that the plans are still negotiable and to add more images of the before and after photos from different perspectives to give the user a clearer idea of the changes. She suggested having overlayed before and after photos and having a ‘slider’ function to make the changes more obvious. From our observations of her use of the prototype, we noticed she did not see the zoom button on the before/after photos which we later pointed out to her. In our meeting with the technical adviser, Delvin Varghese, we mentioned this issue and he recommended making our buttons look more ‘clickable’ by giving them an embossed look.

Other alterations Delvin suggested included changing the colour of the blue text on our introduction page as over the green part of the background it gets less readable, rephrasing the text about stickers and the age question to be clearer and using an ios layout as people already know where to look for back/exit buttons etc making it more easily navigated by first time users. One important point that Delvin got us to think about was the sustainability of our product, where does the data go to, how can the JRA use it to benefit them and can it be adapted in future.

In our meeting with Sean, he initially presumed that the product was meant to be an app as we were presenting it on an ipad; this is something we noted to specify in our final presentation, that the finished product would be on a larger screen attached to a plinth. Aside from this, we carried on discussions about sustainability and what questions we may be asked at the end of our presentation but Sean didn’t have any new suggestions for changes.

In future, during user testing we could think about writing a script for an introduction to the prototype, however, in this situation we already knew the users and they had heard what our prototype was. We had agreed not to given them too much information beforehand what the prototype would ask or how to use it as we wanted to make sure the instructions were clear and it was easy to use.

 

Week 9, NUDC: Preparing for prototype demonstration

Hello again,

This week we met with our client Tony, who reached out to us wanting an update on the project. We caught him up on our progress and gave him a rundown of our prototype, which was not completely ready for testing. He was very understanding of this and we felt like his input will help us improve our prototype even more for our next round of user testing with Ali, Ed and Sean. We would be testing their interaction with the user interface and ease of use, we’d only require devices such as an Ipad, a stable internet connection and a means of collecting data. One of the more important feedback inputs we got from Tony was that we should ask the user of our product to identify their age range and preferred mode of transport, this is because age and transportation will influence their responses.

We recorded notes on where Tony struggled to progress through our rough invision prototype and identified flaws with macro links. In addition, Tony didn’t properly read the text meaning he was unaware of the reward stickers and the progress bar, vital to incentivising our target audience. Henceforth, we plan to develop the design making the reward more obvious and include other improvements that attribute to the ease of use, such as zooming into the map so the user can see the proposed changes more clearly. We also discuss about implementing pop-up tips to make it clearer for our user. Our colour palette was very tertiary at first but we added bold pinks and blues to make the content more appealing and easier to read. Our ideal participants would be the younger demographic but are not exclusive to them, however it would be heavily influenced on the locations we would propose.

We also plan on asking Ali what the long term use of our project could be and if/how it may benefit them, if there is something we could include. We’ve decided to allocate ourselves roles where we’d split up into teams of two, one would interact with either Ali or Ed and the other record their progress. We also plan on conducting our prototype demos indoors in order to avoid any disruptions such as noise or bad weather. We plan on not providing them much help unless needed, and not give away too much information immediately as they wouldn’t be using it blind as our audience would.

Week 7, NUDC: Prototype Planning

Hello again,

This week we started planning out our prototype. We aim to have a somewhat high fidelity design which should be able to be used in an interactive way, for this we plan on using the online tool ‘Invision’. We’ve reached out to our stakeholders and booked a meeting with them so they will have the opportunity to test our design first hand. We hope to discover if our design has an easy to understand and simple to use interface, is enticing and time efficient, relates information about the Streets for People program and the planned changes in a useful way and, lastly, collects feedback appropriately.

To do this we need to create pictures, or so called slides, depicting how the interface should look like. For example we need a welcome screen, a map over Jesmond showing where the locations are, a location slide with information and ways of feedback, a slide showing previous comments, and an ending slide providing the sticker. All of these will then be uploaded into Invision where they will be linked together so as the user could use it in an interactive way.

For our user testing we will divide the stakeholders to try out the prototype on individual screens, with each one of us as a personal guide assisting/monitoring their progress. We will after this ask some prepared questions one on one before joining together for a group discussion about the prototype and design. Hopefully they will give us an unique insight of how the design is perceived by a user.

Week 6, NUDC: Storyboard sketching

Hello again,

During this week’s lecture we listened to a representative from the group SPACE for Gosforth. What he talked about is very much relevant for our project since the group wants to make Gosforth more amiable for cyclists. However, the area of Gosforth is not a part of the Streets for people campaign which makes it harder for them to evoke change. So while the council aims to change people’s way of transport via physical changes of the streets the SPACE for Gosforth aims to change people’s way of transport through an attitude change first and then physical changes of the streets. When we talked to the stakeholders one of the problem that came up was that the public did not understand why the council was changing the area. We’ve discussed this before and decided that we in our product will add information not just about the planned changes but also about Streets for people.

During the seminar and our meeting we started discussing the outline of our storyboard and user experience as well as starting to draw it. All in all we’re thinking about 7-8 storyboard panels for demonstrating the use of our product. Below is the basic outline sketch of the storyboard.

It is important for us to include the most important uses for our product, informing and gaining feedback, together with the sticker concept as a mean to spread the word. The setting will be outside and since we’re hoping to get a lot of response from students, who to a lesser degree have cars, we don’t think this will be a drawback. We’re also thinking about having a second display with the same software in an inside setting as well, for example in the library.

Week 5 NUDC: Mid-term Presentation

Hello again,

This week started with our mid-term presentation in front of the rest of the class. With some mishaps while presenting we pinpointed things that we should remember for our final presentation in January. We got good response for our example research and were told that we should limit our key requirements a bit. Thinking about this we have now discussed and decided upon our most important requirements to be: easy to use and understand; time efficient and enticing; informational and provide opportunity to give feedback on the planned changes in Jesmond.

For this week’s seminar we continued with a bit more example research but later began talking about gamification which means adding game elements in order to evoke more interest in the users. Gamification is something we talked quite a bit about during our Tuesday meeting and that we want to implement in our final product. One of our biggest obstacles with this thought, however, is the risk of getting poor but high-quantity feedback instead of quality feedback. We tried keeping this in mind when we started sketching out ideas for the design.

One of our earliest design ideas was very basic and not really interesting enough to evoke interest in the users. It basically just showed users the changes and were given an opportunity to comment on them if they wanted to. This of course is the main objective with our product but it isn’t really anything new since it is very similar to Commonplace.

After discussing a lot and sketching out ideas we landed, after many iterations, on a design rather similar to our first one but a bit more enticing and different. As a way to encourage users we introduced the concept of giving out stickers when they were finished using the product. These stickers are both meant as an reward but also a means to spread the word about the Streets for People project as well as our product.

Also during our group meeting, we started creating a user experience flow chart so that we could have a clear idea in our heads of the whole feedback process. This is the most basic visualisation of our concept and from here on we need to start focusing on the small details such as colourways, sizing, stickers etc.

Week 4, NUDC: Mentor Meeting

Hello again,

For week four we had a meeting with our academic mentor Sean. At this point we had already got a good outline of the mid-term presentation which allowed us to go through it with Sean making sure it was efficiently informative of our research. Specifically, we went through our goals for the project along with our prioritization and stakeholders. The meeting acted as a reassurance for us that we were on the correct path. With the conclusion of the meeting we decided that the main stakeholder as the target for the project would be students, tailored for the JRA rather than the council.

Furthermore, the seminar gave us some time to go through relative literature about different digital civics projects. For example, one of the inspirations that we had from said literature was the VoxBox, a playfully nostalgic booth that provided the user with a reward in the form of a simple ball. With the addition of an old phone set with a clunky aesthetic it stood out in public and tapped into the public’s curiosity. This led us to the importance of grabbing the user’s attention before they even become a user of the prototype, furthermore this example showed that there is a lot of freedom available for the design of the prototype that could make it eye-catching and intriguing.

Week 3, NUDC: Stakeholder meeting

Hello again,

So far, we have held a meeting with two of our stakeholders, Ali Lamb and Ed Barrington. Ali Lamb works for Newcastle City Council and is part of the Streets4People (S4P) programme. By meeting her we hoped to gain a second opinion (the first being Tony Waterston) on what our goals and main focus should be. She had a slightly different viewpoint in that she thought the residents of Jesmond were already willing and able to provide feedback on planning applications whereas Tony was concerned the JRA were only reaching about 10% of the local population. Ed Barrington, who is a member of the S4P reference group, gave us insight into what difficulties might be found in trying to place some sort of digital technology around the school areas to gain feedback as he is a parent and long term resident of Jesmond. In this meeting we also involved our academic mentor, Sean Peacock, to give us assistance in managing the meeting as he had worked with our stakeholders previously and use his expertise in digital civics and experience as a student to give us a more clear focus of what our role is. Afterwards, Sean told us to not put too much emphasis on trying to reach children as the meeting had a large focus on Jesmond primary school.

We came into the interviews with some pre-prepared questions in mind that had come up from our meeting with Tony Waterston but by carrying out a semi-structured interview, we allowed ourselves to use the new information that the stakeholders told us to think of new questions.

According to Ali the council received money from the Cycle City Ambition Fund (CCAF) to invest into improving cycling routes and walking alike. Ed had informed us that locals often miscomprehend planning goals so instead of adopting to improving cycling they cared more about the council creating more parking lots which contradicts their aims.

The council beforehand became involved with Commonplace, creating a Needs Analysis (interactive feedback map) utilised for 3 months. Jesmond had done considerably better than other areas, which had 467 people registered and producing comments, between them creating 1500 comments. The council has 7 locations in Jesmond in mind, based off of activity and analysis findings which we could utilise as locations for our product placement. Moreover, Jesmond was identified as the most behaviourally malleable area from mosaic profiling, as residents often consist of students and alike. This means they’d be more likely to adopt greener transportation methods such as cycling to the universities. Ed also highlighted the significance of having the physical product we’d create indoors to make it more comfortable and potentially more secure from both weathering and vandalisation.

We have also started thinking about our midterm presentation about our user and stakeholder research. Currently we feel like we’re more or less in phase with the module work and looking forward to meeting our mentor again during the next seminar to further discuss our meeting and what we should do next.

Week 2, NUDC: Meeting with our client

Hello again,

 

Last week we met with our client Tony Waterston who is the chair of the JRA. During the seminar he gave us some new information crucial to the project as well as contact information for other people involved with S4P that could further our understanding of the program and situation. We also talked a lot about the different stakeholders and the problem with reaching out to them. One of the stakeholders we hadn’t considered was the younger demographic, a group that quite often gets left out. Waterston said that one of the goals for the project was that the area should be so safe that eight year olds should be able to move around there for themselves. We also discussed the fact that many students reside in the area and only stay for a few years at most, therefore they might not be as interested in the future of the neighbourhood compared to long term residents. Yet, their input is important nonetheless due to a continuous influx of students moving into the Jesmond area.

 

As shown by the mind map below there are a few different stakeholders that we have pointed out. When it comes to existing residents, it’s students that mostly use bikes to move around the area. We believe that a bigger percentage of students would cycle if there were direct cycle routes to the universities. We also have the long term residents, mostly elderly people who’ve lived in Jesmond for a long time, these tend to drive, adding to congestion in the area. The last group would be the school children and their parents, both who live in the area, as well as those who drive into Jesmond from other areas. It is the latter group that causes a lot of congestion around West Jesmond Primary school. Other stakeholders are of course the JRA and the Streets for People project.

 

Currently the JRA communicate information to the residents via mail, notice boards and library files but these options offer no way to gain meaningful feedback from the public. Residents in the area could if they want comment on the JRA website but this is not often used so the JRA still suffer from a lack of response from the community. The council on the other hand have better methods to obtain input from the people via means such as Let’s Talk, an online survey and discussion website for the residents of Newcastle, and committee meetings where local residents are welcome to take part in and give their opinion during a meeting with representatives from the council.

 

The main goal for our design is that all of these different groups should be able to use and understand it. Since it will be digital we are somewhat concerned that some of the older population will have a hard time comprehending the interface, while the younger generation probably won’t. Therefore it is important for us to have this in mind while designing. For now we have quite a clear view of what our client wants from us as a group and also some ideas as to how we would achieve that. However, after talking to our stakeholders we might discover other aspects that need to be included. In short our key questions for the sprint would be:

  • How do we make an easy to understand interface for everyone while still being able to collect the information our client needs?
  • We know what the client needs, but what is it that the stakeholders want?

During this week we will meet with some of the stakeholders to discuss these matters.

Week 1, NUDC: JRA neighbourhood engagement

Hi there,

We call ourselves Newcastle University’s Digital Civics or NUDC for short and are a group of four students: Frida, Ed, Sara and Catherine. Our project aims to help the Jesmond Residents Association (JRA) to gather a more widespread response from the public about how the area might evolve. As it is now, there is a program called Streets for people (or S4P) going on all over Newcastle which focuses on making the streets more amiable for walkers and especially cyclists. So far they’ve pinpointed some places in Jesmond that are in need of change due to a lot of traffic and unsafe conditions for cyclists and pedestrians. In these areas they have come up with possible solutions that they now want to know the residents’ opinions on. However, a lot of the residents in the area are unfamiliar with the program and how to share their opinion on plans. This is why the JRA choose to take part in this module, what they as clients want to receive is a digital solution to their problem. By modifying cycle lanes, roads and aiming to reducing traffic, they plan to create a more accessible, lively and safe green environment. Therefore, they need a product that can inform the locals on what the potential plans look like and also gather feedback from them together with other possible solutions, suggestions or ideas.

As a team, we need to deliver a prototype which is easy to understand, interactive and informative. One possible way to display our idea is via a storyboard. In order to carry this out, first we must research by speaking to stakeholders such as members of Streets for People, Jesmond Residents Association and the local community. This phase should be completed within the following couple of weeks.

In preparation for the upcoming meeting with our client, we all deconstructed the brief and brainstormed questions to bring forward as well as various ideas that might provide a solution to the issues raised. We made sure to consider what information he may or may not know as chair of the JRA. We even decided to ask him questions the brief answered for us to make sure that we had the correct perspective. For example, we planned to ask about challenges that Jesmond faces and what previous efforts had been attempted.