3.3 Preliminary Product Evaluation

On Tuesday 25 October we conducted two evaluation sessions of the 'final' prototype.

In the first session, three users interacted with the table. We provided little instruction to allow for the users to openly explore interacting with the table and to allow us to observe what they attempted to do.

Key observations were:

1. People wanted to be able to stretch and rotate the news and twitter items
2. Sharing news items was important - this was done by dragging items to other people
3. The interface became cluttered very quickly and collisions caused some issues when the interface was cluttered
4. Some UI elements were 'pushed' off the view due to collisions

A second session was conducted with two other people. During this session a discussion ensued around the possible purposes for the table and the different functionality that would support those different contexts.

Key observations were:

1. It was necessary for us to clearly define an initial context of use in order for people to understand the nature of the interaction
2. This context was important in supporting the social aspect of the table. If not defined correctly, the functionality could cause people to be less social, which was not our intention.
3. It was necessary to create some element to table to both attract attention when it was not being used and to provide some invitation and explanation of how to interact with the project.