Rethinking the App

Hey all,

Before the conferences we wrapped up our usability tests and now that we've returned from San Francisco and Washington we've had time to really consider the test results and the feedback we received.  We created a summary of the data and the changes that we want to consider making to the project based on what we saw and what the subjects told us.

While we have a lot of ideas on things that we might want to change, remove, and add, we decided to pick a couple of the smaller more manageable ones to work on as the school year draws to an end.  Over the summer we will take on the larger changes and tasks.

Icons

Some of the small things that we've been working on are remaking some of the icons that the subjects had difficulty identifying, seeing, or selecting. This was a pretty simple fix with photoshop but hopefully it will make our icons much more visibly accessible than they were during the testing process.


Zooming

Another change we realized we'd need to make after the usability tests was that something had to be done about our tap to zoom method.  The usabiity tests showed that the method was unintuitive, less accurate, and the way that we handled zooming out actually conflicted with accepted zooming conventions.  In Safari, we were informed by one of our test subjects, a double tap (when you're at max zoom) will bring you out to the non-zoomed page.  We do not want the gestures in our app to have unexpected consequences or to conflict with the already existing conventions of zooming in iOS.  As a result, we've decided to remove the tap to zoom functionality and instead use that code for the zoom in and zoom out buttons we have in the app.

While the tap method was largely disliked by the test subjects, several subjects pointed out that it was nice in that there were set intervals that it would zoom to and the pinch method of zooming does not really account for that.  As a result, we're going to use the tap to zoom logic with our icons and have them zoom in and out at set intervals for the user.

Annotation for Note Taking

One of the biggest concerns the subjects expressed was that the notebox, with either the virtual keyboard or the physical keyboard, would not be sufficient for taking notes in class. With the virtual keyboard it was too difficult (typing with two fingers instead of being able to use homerow.  If you try to type with multiple fingers you will often accidentally activate the built in zooming that the iPad provides), or too slow for subjects to use.  The physical keyboard on the other hand could not provide the symbols that students would need to use when taking math or science notes.

The subjects almost all initially believed that the app could be used to tag notes onto certain parts of the lecture, and would try dragging the note box onto the lecture screen.

To try and address both of these very valid points we've decided to try implementing a way for the student to be able to just write notes directly onto the lectures. While we're still working on figuring out how we will save the notes in regards to the lecture, Abhishek has made a test application where you can use a stylus and take/erase notes onto the screen and we will likely be able to use that functionality in our app once we figure out how we want it to work and how we will store the data.

In Conclusion....

While we won't start the hardcore development until the summer, we still have some interesting things we're going to be working on over the next two weeks so stick around and we'll let you know how we're doing and where we're going to be at once summer starts.

-Lindsey

The conferences come to an end; development begins again!

Hello all,

Saying that we have been busy lately would be an understatement! We have spent the last three weeks preparing and presenting our poster at both the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference and the Posters on the Hill Conference (sponsored by the CUR).

Posters on the Hill
We have just returned from Posters on the Hill, and it was an amazing experience. The conference took place at Capitol Hill in Washington DC, and was certainly different than your 'typical' conference. In addition to presenting our poster, we were also able to schedule meetings with legislative assistants of several of our congressional representatives; we presented our poster to the legislative assistants who we spoke with. There was a great deal of interest and positive feedback about Access Lecture from a wide spanning audience; this included congressional representatives, faculty, other poster presenters, and representatives from both the American Chemical Society and CUR.

Our poster was one of 74 which were chosen from an applicant pool of 700+ posters; it is a great feeling to know that our work was chosen to represent the importance of domestic undergraduate research. In addition, getting to go to the National Zoo was not a bad deal either!

Tapia Conference
Just one week prior to attending Posters on the Hill, we attended the Richard Tapia Conference in San Francisco. We were chosen as both scholarship recipients and poster presenters, which meant that we got to attend the conference for all three days and present our work, all free of charge! The conference consisted of talks from distinguished speakers, panels that provided students with information on how to succeed in various aspects of computing, company poster presentations (with companies including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Intel, Symantec, NetApp, and Amazon), professional networking opportunities with companies and academics, and a student poster session.

The Tapia Conference provided valuable experience and exposure to professional networking and student research environments, as well as the opportunity to speak personally with representatives from the companies listed above (and many others). The poster presentation session was excellent; those who saw the poster raised points or gave us ideas which we had not considered before; the poster session also helped us realize what we need to clarify about Access Lecture, and what common questions and misconceptions may be.

Oh yeah, we got to stay at the wonderful Fairmont hotel...free of charge. I think that I am now inspired to become rich, simply so I can live there permanently. We didn't have much downtime, but we did manage to explore San Francisco (getting lost for two hours in the process, thanks to a 'questionable' GPS) and find some great places to eat! It was a sad day when we had to return to the East Coast, where we were immediately greeted by chilly weather and rain.

Conclusion
The past three weeks have been hectic, but very worthwhile. We have tons of photos, but I do not think that they will be needed; these experiences will certainly remain in memory for life! Work on Access Lecture will now resume as normal, with the next step being to further analyze our usability test data and refine our prototype.

Until next time...
- Alex

Hello World to those from Tapia 2011!

Hello everyone,

We've just returned from the 2011 Tapia Conference. We made a lot of connections there, and a lot of attendees expressed interest in our research during our poster presentation.

I just wanted to post this message for those that Lindsey and I met at Tapia, who may be checking this blog out for the first time! We haven't updated in 3 weeks, mostly due to trying to get ready for Tapia, usability testing, and the Posters on the Hill Conference in about a week.

No need to fear though; we will begin updates as normal soon. Here are a few things to expect:

• A summary of the Tapia Conference. It was an amazing opportunity, and summarizing the experience will be difficult.
• A report on the upcoming Posters on the Hill conference in Washington DC.
• An in-depth review of our usability tests, and what we plan to do next.

Thanks to everyone for all of their interest and support.

Check back soon for updates!

Until next time...
- Alex