Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Wireframe and Prototype

Working with the Peter, UX Content, I produced a wireframe and eventual prototype based on the recommendations made by Peter in his summary of the results using Axure.

The website that everyone had the most problems with was the Samsung website, so it was decided that we should focus on a redesign of that website.

Peter produced a low res prototype in Balsamiq.

The major problem participants had whilst using the site was trying to find phones. After going to the phone page, the user is presented with a long page filled with smartphones and accessories. Phones made in more than one colour appear as a separate item. The page presented to the user has 233 items on it.

Filtering is possible only on a few metrics: Operating system and whether or not the item in question is an accessory. As 59 of the 60 phones for sale are on the Android operating system, this filter is next to useless.

As each phone is listed separately for each colour shown, many phones appear multiple times with only the colour as the difference.

To better filter the products, check boxes were used to filter out ‘family ranges’ of phones. This makes it easy to include or exclude phones the customer knows they are not interested in. Checkboxes are not mutually exclusive, so limitless combinations of what is desire can be shown.

Secondly, the ability to filter on Price, Display Size and Memory was included, in the form of range sliders. Range sliders are particularly useful for price, as the prices of the phones are not values set a discrete intervals but over a wide range.

Previously, each phone was listed separated for each different colour that model was available in. Seeing as it is unlikely that one of the major deciding factors for buying a smartphone would be the colour, each phone is listed once, with small coloured boxes along the bottom that can be pressed to see images of the phone in different colours. This cuts down the number of items displayed and allows the user to easily see the colour options without scrolling through several phones.

A style guide was also produced, and is shown below.


Tuesday, 6 January 2015

Results

After writing the Best Practice Model methodology document, we conducted a usability test based on it. From this we gathered some interesting results.

One for the most interesting things is that after using the website, users personal biases towards brands overrode some of the gathered metrics. One participant with a strong affinity to the Apple brand rated their website above that of HTC, despite completing the tasks quicker and easier than on the HTC website.

The other interesting result was that the participant with the lowest baseline emotional engagement was the only one who significantly changed their view on a website after using it.

The next step it to write up a report that covers what we have done and our conclusions on the project as a whole.

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

UX Usability Testing for Emotional Engagement

This week marks the end of the usability testing. After the methodology document was written, it was necessary to test to see if the theory stood up to practice.

The testing was broken down into two phases. Phase One was an emotional engagement test. Research has shown that it is common in the advertising world to measure participant's emotional engagement level so they may be grouped into sets of high, medium and low emotional engagement. Doing so allows a greater understanding of the results gathered.

To measure baseline emotional engagement, users were shown adverts for three brands, whilst being video recorded. The video recording was then run through FaceReader 6 software which gave a readout on the emotional response of the participant, who were then grouped accordingly.

Originally it was proposed that a Neurosky Mind Reader would be used, which measures brain waves to gauge emotional engagement. However, the group had issues getting this to work. As a results, the FaceReader 6 software was used instead.

Phase Two of the testing was a standard usability test. Afterwards, however, the video recording made of the participants was run through the FaceReader 6 software to measure emotional engagement. The purpose of this was to see if participants grouped as high, medium or low engagement produced similar readings. If this was the case, it could be strongly argued that pre screening participants for their emotional engagement is worthwhile, and helps to contextualise the results gained from usability testing.

In addition to making participants watch adverts and partake in usability testing, participants were asked their thoughts on both the brands featured and their overall perception of brands general. This was measured before viewing the adverts, after viewing, and after UX usability testing.

Results of the testing will be analysed this coming week.

Saturday, 13 December 2014

communicate like a cat? brain wave cat ears




While we trying to use Neurosky as one of the method to understand branded ux,
I find an interesting product using the same technology on the internet, it calls Necomimi,
means cat's ears in Japanese, let's see how it works.


http://www.necomimi.com/HowNecomimiWorks.aspx
Well, don't know if the real cats express their feeling that way, a real good example of commercialization of researching equipment. However, for our research, don't know simple reading indicates that user is focused or relaxed can be interpret in to emotional engaged or not, anyway, we will try to find out.



Monday, 8 December 2014

Emotional Engagement Technologies

The group has now tested both the Neurosky, Eye Tracker and Face Reader technologies. The FaceReader shows a range of emotions that the user experiences whilst being filmed. Problems were encountered with calibrating the software so that it measured neutral when the participant's expression was neutral. This was best evidenced by myself, when I used it the emotion that was read was 'angry' a lot of the time!

The FaceReader analyses a section of a recording of a person's face, showing what emotions they are currently displaying. However, it does not show how emotionally engaged a user is, which is want is more important for what we are trying to measure.

Tomorrow we hope to look at the technologies and make a decision as to which best serves our needs.

Thursday, 4 December 2014

NeuroSky

So for our usability test we decided to use NeuroSky as one of the methods to measure emotional engagement. It was my part to arrange NeuroSky and test it so I contacted Tim from the Sony Team as they were also using NeuroSky for their project. Tim helped me to get in contact with one of the team members who was handling the neurosky device. We contacted each through email and once they were done with their work we got our hands on the device. Hurrayy!!

But the sad part was when Dave and I started testing is it didn't work accordingly. We wanted a wireless one and this was not what we were looking for so we had to cancel the NeuroSky. 

Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Wireframing - Using Axure

As part of our final deliverable, we have decided to include a prototype website that has been redesigned with respect to feedback gained during the usability testing portion of our proof of methodology.

As architect, my role encompasses the creation of wireframes for this prototype. Therefore, it was important to gain some experience in wireframing tools.

Axure is used by over 40% of UX professionals, and a educational licence is available for it - it seemed to be a good option for this project. A basic wireframe for a different site has been started. This is just to learn the basics so a decent prototype can be made later on once the recommendations for improvements to the website have been made.


Friday, 28 November 2014

Testing Methodologies

Through research it has been discovered that when conducting emotional engagement testing towards brands, PR companies first test the participants on their brand engagement and then assign them to a group based on their emotional response level. Some people have high emotional engagement towards brands, others much less. By grouping participants in this way, it is possible to see Usability testing with respect to  people's differing emotional engagement levels.

It is proposed that this can feed into the groups research, by pre testing people and working out their prior engagement levels, this will add more quality to the data gained from the usability study.

FaceReader

FaceReader 6 by Track Sys is a piece of software that uses a webcam to capture emotions a person is expressing. A demonstration of the software has been arranged so that the group can evaluate its suitability for the project. It's thought that if it works, it can help with establishing the kinds of emotions that users feel when both interacting with the websites and viewing the adverts.

http://www.tracksys.co.uk/product-details.php?id=20

Thursday, 27 November 2014

Guys, we need to talk! Using google hangouts!



We have used google hangouts for our group meeting since our mentor Raida recommended 
us to use it, very handy and high recommended for you to check where you are ( I mean project)
Even the biggest group in our class (yes, the huge astronautic group) can fit it the "chat room", google hangout allows up to 9 people to meet simultaneously, simply log in and try it out!

Wednesday, 26 November 2014

[eye tracker] Test on Tobii X120 eye tracker


The weather is okay outside so I decide to reach Tobii the eye tracker located somewhere on campus.

Don't know why the door shutting me down from time to time, after some waiting and talking I finally get the access to the system.

Since I am the only one in the lab so I have to be the subject for the testing of the system, and it works well! The image above is the screenshot I made from the section that I tryout the website of Kingston University. It's a heatmap for an intuitive, easy way for the researcher to understand where the participant is looking or not.

I also learned we have to mount the special mounting board to hold the device and and extra arm for the camera to capture the eye motion on other mobile devices I metioned yesterday, we will see if we need to do the extra part of research or not.

Glad to know Tobii works well and I have some fun play with it!
You can do it, simple and easy, just don't forget to bring a flash drive with you, the exported video size is quite big!

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

[eye tracker] interesting clip of previous study by Dr Jo Van Herwegen at Kingston University's Department of Psychology

Oh, cute baby! (Watch the clip and you will know why I say so.)
Dr Jo Van Herwegen mentioned she will consider integrate monitoring brain activity and eye tracker together to get better research data, I think we are on the right track because we have that idea in mind as well and about to put into practice! 

I will be going to play with the Tobii eye tracker a bit tomorrow while our UX strategy, Shaleen going to find out the functions of Neurosky and UX architect, Dave on his way to reach the facial recognition software. Looking forward to it and I will bring my tablet and phone to see if the Tobii system can work well while I operating the website on those devices. We haven't included multi-platform tasks on our branded UX evaluation at the moment, however, know the function and equipment better will definitely benefit our up coming testing task.


http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-x60x120-eye-tracker/



UX Content Role Redefined

The specific task for UX content role in this teamwork context would be listed as follow:


  • Investigate brands and industries to better fit our aim: evaluation of branded UX
  • Produce Usability Testing related documents such as target audience profiling, personas, metrics etc.
  • Produce and develop the material for the testing method UX architect comes with 
  • Work closely with UX architect producing content for better wire-frames/ prototype delivery
  • Shift from Cars to Smartphones

    After the 1st presentation and discussion with Vesna and other classmates we concluded that cars won't match our user group and the personas so we changed to mobile phones/smart phones and the brands we selected were likewise:


    1. Apple
    2. Samsung
    3. HTC


    UX Architect Role Redefined

    After feedback the last few weeks, we have redefined our roles to better suit the project. We are now looking to produce a basic prototype, so my original idea of handling wire-framing will now be necessary. However, as this is only one part of the project, and the Best Practice Model is a bigger part of it, I have refined my role so that I will handle the production of the testing methodology.

    My new role redefined:

    • Investigate methods and trends for testing emotional engagement, in addition to using Shaleen's research on tools
    • Investigate methods and trends for Usability Testing
    • Produce a testing method based on this research
    • Look into producing wire-frames for prototype

    Experimental design, the best practice model?

    Having a presentation in front of everyone in the class along with Professor Vesna and Martin today,
    we are still working on our Branded UX experimental design at the moment, the the simple before/ after or input/ output design will probably server as the base for our future testing/ experiment, we will know it very soon.



    Monday, 24 November 2014

    Honda Crazy Advert

    While going through car adverts I came across this crazy advert of Honda R type.
    The advert is called 'The Other Side'

    While viewing the advert you have to press 'R' key after every few seconds to understand.
    Nice interactive and interesting advert.






    Saturday, 22 November 2014

    Adverts for Usability Test

    While preparing for the presentation we were also deciding the time plan of our usability test.
    I was working on the adverts where I was supposed to collect 3 good recent adverts on the decided Brands.


    It was fun going through the videos of different car brands and how adverts of one brand vary from another. The best adverts were of the Jaguar because of the actors they select like Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston #itsgoodtobebad ;)

    Friday, 21 November 2014

    Preparation for Presentation

    So we have our presentation coming up on 25th of November 2014  as Dave has already mentioned in his post - Planning and Presentation we our working really hard for it.

    Being a UX Strategist I was working on the research part of the presentation where my task was to find the methods for measuring emotional engagement, why do you need it and which method we will be using in our usability test and why.

    The 5 different ways of measuring emotional engagement were:
    1. NeuroSky
    2. Facial Recognition
    3. Galvanic Response
    4. Pupil Response
    5. Eye tracker

    And the method we selected was 

    NeuroSky & Eye Tracker


    Because these were the only two equipments available.

    Wednesday, 19 November 2014

    Planning and Presentation

    The previous week has been focused on writing a scope of work document. We now have a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve, and just as importantly, a plan on how to get there. We are currently tackling phase one of the project, which is emotional engagement measurement. Shaleen (UX Strategy) has started research into what technologies would be suitable for the project, and we have chosen our adverts (see below) for the testing. Dave (UX Architect) is researching how to structure the tests, based on Shaleen's research.

    In addition to this we are also preparing for our presentation which is due on the 25th November.