Week 9
Mar. 29 – Apr. 2
Progress
We settled on the overall structure of our experience (and working terminology) that can address a variety of user needs:
1. Detail View – Browse through a ring of pictures of HistoryMakers that match the chosen filters. This is for people who have just entered the experience or are only interested in browsing individuals in a short, comparatively shallow experience.
2. Overview – View an interactive data visualization of the set of HistoryMakers that match the chosen filters. Manipulate distribution of subset based on an additional option. This is for people who are more interested in viewing the HistoryMakers as a set of people and want to play with the data more.
So far we’ve been polishing the Detail View. At the beginning of this week, we considered some design changes for the filter selection, display shape, and overall UI look and layout. Eventually we settled on a cleaner UI style, and a layout more optimized for information presentation (rather than stay with strict symmetry).
For the Overview, we explored some more options for data visualization, in 3D this time. Per our instructors advice, we will use the pie chart-like visualization, since it’s simple and pairs well with the visuals of our Detail View.
By the end of the week, we had implemented the functionalities of the design below and made it useable across different screen sizes and resolutions, but there is still quite a bit of polishing required. Here, you can view a the set arranged in a pie chart by the chosen filter or a particular slice of the pie (e.g. people in the set who like red).
Our interaction flow for the whole experience is roughly outlined below.
Client
We decided to not meet with the client this week, so we could focus on implementing the Overview.
Next Steps
The next week, we plan to have our first prototype containing all the major functionalities. We will focus on playtesting during that week, to gauge interest in the functionalities and usability of the interface. There is some concern about the user needing to interact with buttons at 3 different corners of the screen, so it will be good to test with naïve users. We will also continue polishing the layout, UI, mobile design, and small interactions.