Create a learning resource that gives the user feedback – in other words, responds to the user's input/actions. Actions could include:
- Clicking
- Typing
- Scrolling
or lack of any of those things. Feel free to pick a new subject, or dive deeper with one you've already used.
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Operation, which uses sound to inform the player they are doing something wrong.
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An essay helper, where the user needs the their entry in a
<textarea>to have five paragraphs and be 300-500 words. -
An essay helper which prompts the user to make sure they are still paying attention if they haven't written anything in a few minutes, but has the option to pause (for dinner, bathroom breaks, and The Voice).
Before showing the users the app, all 3 users said that they have done a usability study before. The users agreed that most of their user testing experiences were confusing, either because the maker didn't explain properly what the application was supposed to do, or the user couldn't figure out what the objective or the methodology of operation of the application is (i.e. what is it supposed to do and why?)
At first, I just showed the 1st picture of the Chrysler building along with the previous and next buttons below it, and covered up the texts above the image. After showing them that and asking them not to interact with it just yet,they said that they just saw a picture of the Chrysler building, and they weren't sure what they were supposed to do.
After letting them interact with it, they realized that it is astep by step methodology on how to make a sketch of the Chrysler building.
What they learned from this was how to learn to sketch the Chrysler building in a simple way. One of the users said that the app has a previous & a next button, that allow her to see the progression of the pictures, and that helped her to understand what this series of sketches is really about.
One of the users commented that the main difficulty was that he didn't know the context or the objective of the app. Was the user simply learning how to sketch a building, or is there an overarching objective to this small exercise? At first he wasn't really sure what he was doing, he was simply clicking the buttons, going through the motion without any clear objective in mind.
In conclusion, I learned that context is important - and that is missing from my app. The user wanted to know if learning how to sketch a building is all there is to it, or if this is part of another, larger learning process. The context could include a background information on why this app is made (e.g. was there, in general, a confusion over how to transform 3D objects in real life into 2D sketches? what is the intended users' age range for this app?), and a clear objective of the app (what does it hope to accomplish? is it simply to teach people to sketch things, or something else?)
What could be changed from my current react app: Since what is missing from my app is the context, I imagine that it could be beneficial to have a 3D sketch of a building, that then rotates itself until one side of the building faces the screen. Then an animation will start that depict the details of the building slowly disappearing and the sketch getting simpler,until it is possible to be sketched by hand. Then the actual sketching process (like the one in the current app) would begin in a short animation. Perhaps with this, the context & objective could be, implicitly, inferred?