October 27th: Group meeting!

Since we are missing a few things, we had a meeting to catch up and decide how we should proceed with the project to pass this course. We planned future meetings and what we should do before and during those meetings, and gave everyone tasks with clear deadlines. Since Elisabet hadn't done an interview, she got the task of summarizing the interviews.

We also looked at the feedback we got on the prototype during the last exercise and decided what we wanted to change and make better with our design. Alexander is going to make a hifi prototype according to what we decided during the meeting, because he liked the Flinto prototyping tool and was excited to work with it. 

Until the next meeting we are all doing a thinkaloud with the new prototype. We are also going to (finally!) make our state of the art research.  

State of the art research (Elisabet)

In his master thesis, Yizhaou Zhang writes about RTCI - real time crowding information. Apparently even in rush hour there are a lot of empty seats on the metro trains, because the crowd is concentrated to specific parts of the train. Zhang tested giving audible and visible information about where the train was crowded at the KTH metro station based on a combination of historical data and observation at the previous metro station.

Zhang found that when this information was provided, people changed their behavior and the front of the train was less crowded. A lot of people thought that the visual information was more useful than the speaker system that was used to provide the audible information.

Zhang discussed different ways of providing the visual information and the challenges of getting the attention of the passengers, and found that the information should be nearby the existing information display.

I think this could be applicable to the commuter trains in Stockholm as well. A lot of people in our interviews complained about the crowded trains, and the commuters often travel for a longer time than metro passengers, so it is helpful for them to have a place to sit.

Seminar 1 - Individual notes

Ch. 7 Data gathering

The chapter as a whole describes the different techniques, issues and purposes regarding data gathering as a subject.

The three different techniques that are described in this chapter are Interviews, Questionnaires and Observations. Which techniques to use at what time varies according to the situation, there are advantages and disadvantages depending on the nature of the situation. More often that not, it's better to combine them even though it can be costly and time consuming.

They further explain that there are five key issues that we're looking at when it comes to data gathering. The issues described are goal setting, identifying participants, the relationship between the data collector and the data provider and the pilot studies

Different ways of saving the information from the techniques described are either through, video, audio or taking notes, either by hand or typing.

What I personally enjoy and think is one of the best way of learning, is through the observing technique mentioned above. There's a saying that "Children doesn't do as you say, they do as you do" and there's alot of truth involved in that, especially when it comes to people close to us. It can be hard sometimes to determine why they do as they though just through observing, which is why we chose to either combine it with other techniques or lean towards using other types of observation such as the think-aloud technique. It still has its drawbacks, but is still a pretty decent solution when going through different cases or scenarios with users.

Ch. 8 Data analysis, interpretation and presentation

This chapter begins to explain the difference between Quantitative and Qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis tends to value the statistical or mathematical information when it comes to observing different cases, i.e numbers and sizes. Qualitative analysis on the other hand are more interested in patterns and themes of the data presented to the research.

You could more or less divide these different methods by saying that the Quantitative analysis focuses on the what, when and who, and the Qualitative analysis focuses on the why and how.

Ch. 10 Establishing requirements

(To keep it short)

This chapter is mainly to focus on what, how and why you need requirements for your project. What kind of requirements are needed and why are they needed? How are we supposed to meet these requirements?

This is also where personas and scenarios are presented.

State of the art analysis - Individual report

We could all agree on that one of the biggest issues during your everyday commute is with other people and the endless fight you have to put up with to get whereever you might be going. The train might be full which would result in you arriving late or in worst case scenario, not at all.

There are a couple of solutions that has shown up during the years, some ofcourse better than others. One of the solutions that one should’ve seen atleast once during your travels are the large signs that are stationed at almost every subway station or platform, which displays the traffic during the specific hours. Sort of like a graph, displaying the “crowd intensity”.

Another similar tool is this webpage, which I stumbled on during my research. It works in more or less in the same way as the stationed sign, though this is alot more interactive and feels alot more intuitive.

http://mtr-rusning.delibr.se/

The problem is that most people doesn’t bother planning their commute besides when and where they should going, not taking into account that there could be delays or other problems occuring.

The difference between the sign and the webpage is obvious, seeing as it’s one that’s accessed by the use of internet and the other which is available for everyone already at the station. Though already being at the station and realising that you’re at the most heavy trafficed time during the day, is not really going to help. The webpage itself works really well and should aim to be implemented into the standard SL-application that is already out there and used by tens of thousands. It even tells you where in the train there are the least, respectively the most amount of people.

The main issue within the application I see here is that the statistics and information can vary drasticly during different days, despite it being during the same hours. Which seems to have been overlooked or not made clear enough.

Summary of interviews

Since I didn’t get a chance to do an interview of my own, I have summarized our findings from the interviews.

The interviews from different people were quite different, since the group did the interviews on two separate occasions. One group did one interview each which gave one lenghty transcript and two shorter ones. Axel seemed to have a hard time getting his interviewee to talk. Hanna and Alexander did their interviews a bit quicker and talked to several people. I think this suited the context of use for our target group well (people taking the trains are often in a hurry, going home from work and a bit stressed, etc.) and is probably the way I would have done my interviews.

Quick overview of the answers to our questions:

What is the best and what is the worst about this route?

• Best: Nothing, the view, the Tunnels so people can’t use their phones, place to sit in the other direction, good trains (they are new), short stretch, good feeling.
• Worst: A lot of people, time-table is lying, all the people congested the train, the trains doesnt departent often enough, train lines, not enough places to sit, the speaker should be in english, Outdoor platforms. bad reception

What would you want to add to your travel experience?

More seats, nothing, more wall-outlets, fold-out tables, more tracks, more seats, information about connections, having the platforms indoors, visualizations over the connections.

What do you feel when you travel from Centralen to Karlberg?

Dont know, uncertainty, happy, Stressed => Relaxed, nothing because it’s only 2 minutes of my trip, no feelings, completely neutral, good feeling, very nice feeling, home-sick, tired but relaxed.

In general, people seemed to want more seats on the trains, and more information about the trains in regards to connections. Some of the things people wanted to improve their experience is hard for us to do anything about, like “more trains”, “having the platforms indoors”, but it is the data we could expect from such broad questions.

We wanted to use these interviews for qualitative data to get a feel of the target group (commuters) and get inspired in what we wanted to design. Our discussions about this led to us having two ways of proceeding: either design some kind of experience to help people relax on the train on the way home from work to cool down, or something practical to improve some of the things people complained about.

Feedback from another group

This is the feedback we got from Group 4 during exercise 4!

Kommentarer till grupp 4, från grupp 3
Pendeltåg - Karlberg-Centralen

Målgruppen

Framgår det tydligt mot vilka tjänsten riktar sig?
Målgruppen är pendlare men vi anser att den fungerar lika bra för alla som vill få plats på tåget. Då produkten är platsbunden så riktar den sig till de som redan befinner sig på plattformen.

Är funktionaliteten anpassad för målgruppen? (språk, svårighetsgrad, målgruppens intressen)
Det är mycket symboler och färger, vilket gör att den fungerar globalt och är lättförtåeligt.
Är pendlare intresserade av en platsbunden tjänst? Vi tänker främst på tilläggstjänsterna i appen, kanske skulle man vilja ha information om tågets position och information om det även innan man är på perrongen. Går den att implentera i SL-appen? Kanske kunde det finnas en ikon för varje sökning där man kan se hur fullt det är, osv.
I TC kan man gå upp från två håll - finns dessa LED-paneler även nere vid spärrarna?

“Känslan”  

Vad säger första intrycket?
Intuitiv, känner igen Nils frustration och ser detta som en lösning. “Asbra, I want it everywhere”. Då de använder färger och ljus som rör på sig (speciellt på displayen) gör det att användarna bara behöver använda sekundärminnet, samtidigt är det ett språk alla förstår.
Finns ingen uppdelning på leden så man vet inte var en vagn börjar och en annan slutar.

Kommer användarna att stanna kvar? Återbesöka?
Vad gäller LED:en, JA. Vi tror inte att de kommer orka använda en till app när de redan har SL-appen som ger dom både reseplanerare och störningsinfo.


Behåller man användarna hela vägen?
Skyltarna är bra som de är och vi tror inte att folk kommer att orka installera en app för att få mer info.

Interaktion och övergripande struktur

Tydligt flöde?
LED:en är supersimpel och utan interaktion. Appen är ganska simpel men första steget med GPS och foto känns lite jobbig. Ka
Kartan över var tåget är känns lite plottrig och svår att förstå. Var är tåget i jämförelse med var jag är? Kanske en progressbar över hur långt tåget har kommit i jämförelse med senast lämnade station och kommande? Kanske är det bättre att inte ha en vanlig karta och istället en tågkarta.

Man vet precis vad man ska/kan välja?
Symbolerna är tydliga i appen och LED:en är tydlig förutom att vi skulle önska att det fanns uppdelningar för vagnar.

Funktioner och kringfunktioner

Är huvudfunktionerna i "fokus" i designen?
LED:en är i fokus men det känns nästan som att det är två olika produkter där appen bara ger mer information som kanske inte intresserar folk lika mycket.

Finns det kringfunktioner i gränssnittet som verkar värdefulla? (exempel, ej helt genomförda)
Finns det något sätt att implementera ljudnivå i LED:en? Kanske mer “spikes” på LED:en där ljudnivån är hög.

Design/komposition

Är funktioner och element naturligt grupperade?
Att ha LED:en på tavlan är helt klart naturligt.

Har designen en bra struktur/layout? Konsekvent? DETTA VILL DISKUTERAS
Appen, ikonerna är för stora och placeringen av en iklickad ikon i mitten känns som waste of space. Är den tagna bilden viktig att ha kvar på toppen?  

Ligger de viktigaste funktioner centralt?
Ja, LED:en sitter där vi är vana att titta.
Vad vi förstår är den viktigaste funktionen, information om platser är genomgående placerad i focus och ögonfallande.

Och mindre viktiga saker perifert/nedtonat?
Ja, extra saker ligger i appen!
Men i appen så nej, de tar nästan upp mera plats på appen än huvudinformationen, totalt tar knapparna upp nästan en tredjedel av skärmen.

Förslag på förändringar? Ta bort något?
I appen så skulle det vara bra att i stället för använda en bild för att visualisera den informationen som valt borde det i ställets användas genererad grafik. Nu ni kanske reda har tänkt så men inte implementerat det i eran prototryp app än.

Tror ni designen är tilltalande för målgruppen?
LED:en tycker vi fyller en väldigt bra och saknad funktion.

Hjälp

Erbjuds nån form av stöd för att ta sig igenom bokningen/informationssökningen/aktiviteten?
Appen, det enda steget som vi anser kan vara svårt är att förstå att man ska använda kameran, men det finns en text när appen startas som säger vad man ska göra.

Behövs det?
Kanske skulle det vara bättre med en frågetecken-ikon? Texten tar nämligen mycket plats och gör fotorutan mindre.

Skisserna

Är de tillräckligt tydliga/självförklarande för att ni ska kunna ge konstruktiv återkoppling?
Ja! Appen var superbra presenterad, lappen vi fick var inte lika bra.  Att på tavlan rita en bild över LED:en gjorde det lättare att se och förstå.

Genomtänkt/slarvigt?
Frågan är om appen ens kommer att få något genomslag. Liknande informationappar har tagits fram men inte fått genomslag, antagligen på grund av SL-appens redan stora genomslag.

Andra viktiga frågor/missar/problem/tips?

Risk - tänk om alla springer dit det är grönt? Fundera över om det är bra eller dåligt?
Tips - implementera i SL-appen
Tips - Staplar över ljudnivå som överensstämmer med bilden över var det är fullt
Tips - Bluetooth på skylten som connectar med mobil (jobbigt att ta upp telefonen och fota)
Tips - Mata in var man är eller välja på kartan var man är ifall GPS inte vill fungera

A prototype!

Before the exercise today, we met up to finalize an idea! We picked this idea because we thought that it had good potential to become simple to use and valuable for a lot of people.

 This is a preview of our prototype:

This low-fi prototype is what we used as the source for our feedback. Low-fi is done initially since its simple, cheap and quick to produce, enabling us to be able to change its design without much effort.

We used the program Balsamiq, which is described beautifully(Axel's and Koski's personal opinion) on its own website with the description "improve your designs by getting immediate and meaningful feedback. Sketch-style wireframes help focus the conversation on content and interaction, not minute details (those can come later)."

 Prototyping with Balsamiq is like prototyping with index cards, the difference is the small pieces of cardboard is in the computer instead of on the table. When you're using index cards, you can step through the cards, interacting with the cards and it's exactly the same thing using the low-fi prototyping with balsamiq. This is a commonly used technique for developing websites and applications.

Pain points for our scenarios

During our interviews, we asked people about the best and worst things about travelling between Stockholm Central and Karlberg, and their answers seemed like good things to use for pain points. We have related these to our personas and scenarios and how much Kicki and Nils care about each issue/opportunity.

We think this is a good method to get a compact view of the context we are working for.

Issues/Opportunities	Kicki (Primary)	Nils (Secondary)
Not getting info on alternative travel routes along with the primary route	1	3
Having to stand because the train is too crowded	3	1
Having to wait for the next train because the last one was full	3	1
Listening to street musicians on the train	3	3
Can’t hear the voice in the speaker	3	3
Having to interact with people	2	1
Freezing or sweating because the train does not have the right temperature	4	2
Not being able to reach a charging outlet	2	1
Looking at the view from the window of the train	1	5
Being able to listen to music	3	2
Bad reception	3	1