Enter the maze

Wake Up! Fix it!: Walkthrough

So, you are a usability expert. You've been set the task of creating a new usable design for a hotel alarm. What do you do?

A woman hitting the alarm at 5:15

You have decided to do some analysis of the design using your expertise.

The problematic hotel alarm is a gadget that people need to find easy to use on first sight. It is a "walk-up-and-use" device in the same category as ticket machines and the like. People using it will probably not have seen it before, though will probably have seen other kinds of alarm. After all a lot of the guests may only stay one or two nights and it be their first time at your hotel. Others may have stayed before but a long time ago, so even if they worked it out last time they will have forgotten the detail by now. That means it must be very easy to see how to do things, what to do next and whether you just did the right thing.

You need an analysis method that focusses on these kinds of issues. "Cognitive Walkthrough" is one such method. We will look at a simplified version here. It involves several steps:

1. Work out the kind of user the gadget is for. Think up a specific character - a person who might be staying in the hotel. How much can they be expected to know? What might their reactions be? For example can you assume they have seen similar kinds of alarms before.

2. Decide what task you will analyse. In our case we might start with the task of setting the alarm to come on at 8:30.

3. Write down a list of the exact sequence of actions (which buttons to press, etc) needed to do this, together with what happens as a result of doing the action (what feedback is there to tell them they got it right / wrong?).

4. For each action in the list answer some questions about it (see below) and based on the questions try and think of a convincing story about why your character gets that step wrong or becomes confused.

5. Suggest ways the design could be improved to avoid the problems in the story.

The core of the method is the questions you ask to base the failure stories on. These questions are asked of EVERY action / button press.

1. Why will the person do the wrong thing? This might be either because they do not realise what they have to try to do (like not realise it needs to be switched on first). It might also because they know what to do just not how to do it (they can't find an "on" switch)

2. Why are they not sure they got the action right/wrong? For example if on pressing a button nothing at all changes, then they might assume they didn't press it properly and press it again. If there is a change it might give them no clue that they did do the right thing.

So first you think up some characters. You should have produced a task action list when exploring the alarm. If not, now is the time to do so. (Here is one such task action list for the hotel alarm- though try and produce your own before checking it against this one.

You may find it easier to use this form for the analysis: (.pdf) (.doc) Fill one form out for each step in the task being analysed.

Time to do the analysis, tell some stories and come up with some design improvements, or possibly your own completely different design!

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Wake up! Fix it!

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The Fundamentals of Human Computer Interaction

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Hotel Doors and Keycode Algorithms

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The wake-up. Fix it! series of cs4fn articles is based on a Science Week activity organised by the Department of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London, with support from the Research Councils UK.