Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

P4 Report
A. Part 1
a. The target user group is Georgia Tech students who are looking for students to create groups
with for the purpose of doing projects and/or studying. This prototype, “Studyaholic” is a
mobile application that allows for users to create study groups and/or project groups by
allowing them to connect to other students in their classes. The users can filter through
students with various search criteria, such as workstyle, classes, major, age, and interests.
This application is accessible to all users of the campus. Thus, the physical location of the
user does not affect whether they are able to find a compatible study or project group. Users
are able to find other students and start building relationships to see if they would create a
successful group together. The main task of this application is to match the user with other
Georgia Tech students with similar classes, workstyle, and interests to create potential study/
project groups. Because there is the difficulty of connecting with other classmates when
classes are so large and the fact that it is almost impossible to meet everyone in all of one’s
classes, this prototype takes on the task of matching users with other students in their classes
with similar workstyle and ethic by allowing users to filter through students in their classes
using the various search criteria. The users can then make the conscious decision if they wish
to match with the students brought into their feed by the filter. Studyaholic also tries to
succeed in promoting students to build relationships with each other. This prototype contains
a chat feature in order for users to start conversations with other users. Students would be
able to learn about each other and further look into making a study group with the people they
matched with. From there, users can try to bring their matches together to make a bigger
group. Even if there is the occurrence that users think that a group with a person they chatted
with will not work out, there is still that personal connection that is built between these two
people.
b. For each user test, Sophia Worley served as the note taker. She took note of each user name
and the answers to each of the questions and noted any observations. She also administered
the SUS Survey to the participants. Christopher Messina was the facilitator. He led the users
through the tasks they needed to complete and provided information and help when the users
were confused or needed clarification. Tanya Churaman and Sabrina Seibel served as users
for other students’ prototypes. They were responsible for trying to understand the high-level
goals of the prototypes. The also had to answer the user questions for each prototype with
thoughtful answers to provide quality and useful feedback in order for their peers to make the
necessary changes for their final prototype.
i. Please see attached pdf called “User Testing Photos.pdf” for pictures from the
user testing.
c. Observations in User Testing
i. Describe the task(s) they performed.
- The tasks that the user performed were: to create a new account, make a match
with the user provided in the prototype, and message one of the previous matches
that was already provided in the prototype.
ii. Explain why you chose the task(s) that you did for your users.
Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

- We choose to have the users complete these three tasks because these tasks test
the major features of the problem space that we had planned for the application to
have. By having the users test these main features, we were able to observe and
analyze what issues exist in the application and where improvements could be
made in the design.
iii. Describe where (if at all) the users struggled to complete parts of the task.
- The users tended to struggle to manveur from the profile page to any of the other
pages on the app. There was the common occurrence of the users stating that they
did not see or understand the icons/buttons at the top of the screen until they were
explained by the testers (us). The users also displayed confusion on how to
register as a new user. Quite often, they would try to link their social media
accounts, such facebook, twitter, etc, via the social media icons on the sign-in
screen as a means of attempting to register to create a new account. They did not
realize their mistake until they were told that they had to click on the words “new
user” to create a new account.
iv. Describe where (if at all) the users easily completed parts of the tasks.
- The users were easily able to message people, and most of them were easily able
to create a new profile on the registration page. The few that were not easily able
to create a new profile were confused by the wording to fill in for profile on the
screen, but once the semantics of the wording were explained, they were also
able to quickly complete the task of filling in all the information to create a new
profile.
v. Provide example think-aloud data you collected.
- Example think aloud :“Ok so I have never seen this app before so I should
probably make a new user. Let me link to facebook. Oh. I see, nevermind I am
going to click on new user and fill out this profile. Ok, so I’ll enter in all this
information. Hey, what’s the difference between classes and classes I want to
study? Oh, I see you should change that. Well, I hit submit and now I am on my
profile page. Now what do I do, like I don’t know how to get to any of the other
pages? Ah, ok ok ok. So I click the green and red button, which takes me to
matches.”
d. Please see attached pdf called “Responses to Usability Testing and SUS Questions.pdf”.
e. Changes Made to the P3 Prototype
i. We changed our P3 prototype by including a “Home Screen” that pops up when users
initially sign in or sign up to Studyholic. This screen eliminates user confusion by
displaying what the different icons mean and allowing users to navigate to the screen
that matches their need (finding a match, sending a message, or viewing their profile).
ii. We added a home button on every page to take users back to the “Home Screen”,
giving them an “emergency exit” if they no longer want to be on the page they are on,
meeting the ​User Control and Freedom​ heuristic.
iii. Instead of the app showing the user’s calendar to other users, we blacked out the time
periods that the user is busy to protect the user’s privacy.
Team 12: CS Villagers - Tanya Churaman, Christopher Messina, Sabrina Seibel, & Sophia Worley

iv. We added arrows on the side of the match’s picture and calendar on the “Matching
Screen” to reduce user confusion on how to see the match’s calendar.
v. We changed “specialty” to “concentrations” on the “Sign-up/Registration Screen” to
meet the ​Match between System and Real World heuristic​. Users seemed to be more
familiar with the term “concentrations”.
vi. We changed the “Matching Screen” from including the match’s course schedule to
just including the classes that the match wants to study for. This feature protects users
privacy and increases the app’s ​Aesthetic and Minimalist Design​ by only showing the
class information necessary to obtain a study partner.
vii. We made the buttons a different color than the text on the screen to increase the app’s
Efficiency of Use​.
viii. We added notification buttons to signify when the user has a new match or new
message. This feature helps increase the app’s ​Visibility of System Status​.
ix. We put a bar between the buttons at the top of the screen and the information below to
clarify that the buttons do the same thing on every page, cementing the app’s
Consistency and Standards​.
B. Part 2
a. Please see video attached: “P4 CS 3750.mp4”.
i. Also, this is the YouTube link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_D0mIYwxmY&feature=youtu.be
ii. Our higher-fidelity prototype was created using Balsamiq. It can be accessed through
this link: ​https://balsamiq.cloud/sdkhxsj/pbf20kh
b. We used Balsamiq to create our final prototype because when compared to other
wireframing/prototyping software, Balsamiq fits our needs the best. We chose to use
Balsamiq rather than other available prototyping methods because it is optimized for
communicating design concepts. Since our primary focus is the User Interface of our
prototype, Balsamiq offers just the right amount of capabilities that allow us to effectively
communicate our design without losing our audience in the technicalities and minor details of
the app.
C. Part 3
a. Please see our presentation with the attached pdf called “Final Presentation.pdf”.