Decapod 1.0 design user testing (July 6, 2010)

Info

Tested against: non-functional design mockups
Participant type: SME
Protocol: informal walkthrough + think aloud

Notes

Book management stop-gap screens
- The "new book" icon in the top left: is that an actual button, or part of a breadcrumb?
- Instinctively click on the middle book icon--it looks like it wants to be clicked (the book icon is dominant). Would first hover over it to see if it's clickable.
Calibration screens
- What if two cameras are already connected, and the error reads that there are no cameras connected? The error message doesn't prompt the user to check connection. There should be some indicator of what the user could try and do for common problems.
- Instinctively, w/out message, would check to see if the cameras are really attached, and then press try again.
- Is there another level of troubleshooting possible here if you try again many times, and it doesn't work? What happens if I try again and it doesn't work?
  - Maybe a check-list, or a walkthrough?
  - "Still having trouble connecting? Try these tips..."
  - Help function
- Why is "Supported cameras" a different colour and underlined? Looks like a hyperlink to another page
- Why would I ever want to skip camera setup? I wouldn't be able to capture anything. The user would be frustrated because it's a dead-end.
- Be more direct: change the wording to "For best results, complete calibration before capturing"
- Be more direct: just "Left page, right camera" (don't like "i.e.")
- Expect to use in this way:
  - Rotate, and then do another test capture just to see if it works.
  - Might capture the other non-rotated image again as well, just to be sure things are working (would expect it to, but just in case)
- If the cameras are pointing to the right pages, why would you need to swap them?
- [After telling the user that the zoom level needs to be the same on the cameras] Where is this specified?
- [After telling the user that this is the area where you make your corrections and adjustments to the camera for book positioning, orientation, zoom, lighting, etc.] There should be a checklist, a pop-up. Ask questions like: are you happy with the amount of whitespace, is the lighting good, is the focal/length zoom good?
Capture
- First action would be to click the big camera
- But what does "this area" refer to? A first-time user might not know what that means. It's not intuitive that the whole frame be clickable.
- Don't need to be precise to click--that's good 
- Re: blue capture button; seems to indicate that I'm in capture mode, but as opposed to what?
- First impression of the screen:
  - Need to figure out all these new things
  - Haven't seen these buttons before
  - It's simple, but there's a lot hidden behind it; e.g., what's the implication of manual vs. auto capture?
  - What is the left panel for?
- [After capturing one page] Left panel is for previewing pages that were captured--that's good
- Button for changing capture modes is unintuitive
Auto-capture
- Like the indicator bar, telling how much time is left before next capture
- The white square [stop button] has no meaning to user. Maybe use colours instead--green to go, red to stop?
- Nice that you can change the capture interval on the fly without having to go into configuration or settings window
Review unprocessed
- Why are there duplicate images on the left and right side? [stereoscopic capture mode]
Review processed
- Confused as to what to do on this screen
- Page spread type: when clicking "1" would expect just one page to display (i.e., reload with just one page showing); not sure which page would display (left or right)
  - Looks like a view changer, not a computer input; it wasn't asking for anything
- Language should be consistent: "Apply to following", "Boundary applied to subsequent pages"
  - Expected clicking on the tab would give a list of pages that you wanted to apply it to
  - Change to "Apply to all subsequent let pages"
- Did not know that the user needs to set content boundary boxes--make that clear; need prompting to do it
- There needs to be some explanation for what you're doing with the boundary boxes; why the boundary boxes?
- Easy to do when you know how to do it though--well thought-out.
- Need instructions on what a proper cropping/boundary is
- Recapture makes a lot of sense
  - Leave it as a two-step process, not one, or three or more (don't need more confirmation)
Export
- Why can't you pause individual items?
- Not clear that you can click and drag to change priority of exports
Overall
- Awesome. Really, really good.