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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, December 09, 2005

Team Stilton Blue: Zach Brock,Luis Diego Cabezas, Alex Dorsk

Faculty Adviser:Prof. Lynn Andrea Stein

Car Sound System

Goal: to learn about interface design by designing a more usable car sound system for people in their mid-twenties.

• Our design process• Our current design• Lessons learned

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Overview

• User interviews

• Creation of test personas & initial designs

• Low-fi prototype testing through interviews

• Interactive prototype

• Refinement through heuristic evaluation

• Further refinement through user interviews

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Our design process

We interviewed passengers and drivers.

We asked them

• What they do in their cars

• How they use their current sound systems

• What they want their sound systems to do

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

User Interviews

Identified from the user interview data.

Specific goals unique to our users:

• Being able to drive safely while using a system

• Being able to use auxiliary music players (i.e. iPods) while driving

• Being able to use cellphones while driving12/09/05 5

Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Design Goals

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Test Personas

Our first designs had features such as:

• Large, graphical mode buttons and a touch screen

• Steering wheel controls

• Integration with a car’s main computer

• Integrated auxiliary device controls

• Cellphone controls12/09/05 7

Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Initial Designs

We tested our initial designs in the context of our personas. We also used low-fidelity paper prototypes to test our designs with real users.

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Testing Initial Designs

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Low-fidelity Prototypes

Tests with personas and paper prototypes told us how we could refine our designs.

We decided to:

• Simplify displays

• Maintain standard modes in our design

• Keep information density low

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Design Refinement

• Attempted to maintain familiar interactions

• The dynamic panel physically rotates to provide a different button layout in each mode

• The static panel contains the options and controls available in all modes

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

First Interactive Prototype

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Based on feedback from a heuristic evaluation we made additional changes:

• More text labels• Standardized buttons• Simplified CD interface• Linear staggered CD button mapping• Changed color of on/off button• Standardized control buttons for switching

tracks/stations12/09/05 13

Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Second Interactive Prototype

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Based on user interactions with our second interactive prototype we made additional changes:

• Mode buttons light up to show current mode

• Clearer volume knob

• On/off button became only ‘off’ button

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Third Interactive Prototype

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

• Is easy to use and learn

• The simplicity limits errors

• Maintains mental model of car stereo

• Physically separates different modes

• Layout of buttons and separation of panels allows users to feel for controls, improving safety

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Advantages

• Limits range of interaction

• Requires adapting to current mode before using

• There is an imposed time delay due to the physical changing of modes

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Disadvantages

Let’s see what the first interactive prototype looks like…

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Demo of Final Prototype

• Testing early with users helps• Doing test run-throughs (walking through the

script, etc.) helps make tests effective• It’s hard to think of new ideas when you have

ideas that work, especially in existing or mature systems

• KISS: Keep it simple, stupid. All of our design changes involved simplifying previous designs

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Lessons Learned

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Olin College HFID – Team Stilton Blue

Questions?