Citizen Science: Finalize Design

Well this is the final part of the Citizen Science project with decent results I feel.

First off .. here is a link my final version of my Trash app.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/d92a2c0a-7d72-43bf-7658-7484141c17e1-af1b/


After my feedback sessions I had a number of items that I needed to clean up or add.
Here is a few items that was changed for the final version.

1. Through out the application I made sure the button size was greater than 44 pixels in height. This caused trouble throughout the testing with the buttons difficult to push due to their size.

2. I completely forgot to have a continue button on the introduction page. This was added because the process flow stopped without it.

3. I better identified the account links by underlining them. This shows that they are links and makes the user aware of the active link.

4. Also changed up the gaping to clean up the page a little. During the testing process there was some confusion what the boxes where linked to because of the closeness of the boxes.

5. Added a link to the statistics page from the start page; This was added because some times a user might just want to look at the data instead of catalog something new.

6. Moved the location bar from the bottom of the screen to the top for better view. It seemed to get lost at the bottom of the page with the help link and other details.

7. On the catalog page added a sort button that includes alphabetize selection and popular. This will now allow users to have personal preferences on how the catalog list is organized.

8. Grey out the screen to show that is not active during the review process. I wanted to make sure the user understands while in the review process that no changes can be made.

9. Cleaned up the camera link with a larger button and not listing the bulk add page to remove the clutter from the left hand corner.

9. Cleaned up the statistics page by adding a personal and location for the amount of trash that was collected. With multiple selections it makes it better for the user to clearly interpretation what data they are seeing.

There was also mention of what happens when the application doesn't have access to service.

I would think that it would not work correctly due the map linking as with google maps not working with no service. 

Citizen Science : User Testing & Accessibility

This section is about user testing outside of the college and different types of users to be covered. Here is my testers and the results. 

Color-Blind: This wasn't a person test, but to load images from the application into a website that mimics color blindness. I did the version of green color blindness and red colorblind. With the colors I picked the red was the worse of the two and actually not bad enough to make changes in the color.

Normal log on screen

Red Color Blind

Catalog Screen

Red Color Blind

Red Color blind shaded

Original Splash Screen

Visually Impaired: Test for the visually impaired in one of the following ways:

• I went with someone who has far-sided vision (can't see close up) to test the app without their glasses. My sister normally wears glasses most of the time and has trouble seeing them without them. She had questions about the location on the map that I plan to resolve in my fixes. The other findings was some way of sorting out the trash found. 
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Motor Impaired:  Test for the motor impaired in one of the following ways:

• The requirements for this is the tester may ONLY use the thumb on their non-dominant hand to interact with your app.

• Pictured is my niece using the app, she is a left hand person normally.  Her findings were the buttons were difficult to push because I was not following the 44 pixel requirement for button sizes. Otherwise found it interesting and had very little trouble getting around the application.

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Older Generation: Test someone who is over the age of 55.

This test was done by my mother in her Seventies, the feed back I go was trying to understand why someone would want to collect trash for free. Had a lot of questions of what kind of company what Citizen Science was. Most of the questions about the application was off topic and more about college based questions, had to keep refocusing her on to the project at hand. Not having a lot of experience with phone apps there was a lot of basic questions of information that normal users do not have.

 Anyone: Conduct your test on anyone.

The final tester was my brother in law, first off he didn't care for the color of the application but more of a personal choice than an aesthetics one. Liked that it only had a few steps to get everything done.  No real technical issues but also complained about the button size that I will address in the final version.

Citizen Science Research

What is citizen science?

A collaborative effort to collect data on certain subjects in the natural world by everyday people made available for scientists to analyze.

What three citizen science projects did you try? Describe their objectives.

Ignore That! - Help researchers better understand people’s ability to ignore unnecessary information.

Shelter Dog "Rehoming" Study Wants Your Help - Citizen science project looking for pet owners for a study to help improve dog welfare.

The Plastic Tide - Help scientists figure out where the millions of tons of plastic entering our oceans every year ends up.

Road Kill reports – It is an anecdata app that tracks road kill and allows researchers better understand migration patterns and hit traveled crossing for animals. This was actually my favorite looking at the information that it provided.

What are the first few things you see or do for a citizen science project before you officially participate? Please describe at least two things, each with an example from the experiences you tried.

I looked for things that I had interest in or experience with. I have traveled many places in the past that had very bad garbage polices, and it was everywhere. The other is the love of dogs, anytime I see something dealing with them, it will automatically get my attention.
What makes a citizen science experience enjoyable and/or addicting? Please describe at least three things, each with an example from the experiences you tried (3 observations, 3 examples).
It is interesting to see the discussion of thousands of people talking about trash. It does give someone hope that people are aware of the issue and trying to figure out how to solve it.
Ignore that! was part of the games with words website and ended up taking another test that dealt with understanding words that matched. Only got a 60% but felt a foreign speaker would have a lot more trouble than I did but was an interesting test.

What makes a citizen science experience not enjoyable? Please describe at least three things, each with an example from the experiences you tried (3 observations, 3 examples).

My first observation is some of the projects are closed out or already complete. There is no real notification of this until signing up and finding there is nothing to participate in or the linked website is taken down.
The other is on the website identifying trash. It does have good instructions but when you get looking at page after page and not seeing anything. You begin to wonder if you are missing something that you should see.
Most of the tests are very academic, so every answer has to be thought about. To get a true answer on somethings it helps when the person gives you their gut reply.

Last thing was tied to the Road kill app, there is a section where people can upload pictures. I am not sure how helpful that is .

Finalize Design

The changes I made from the recommendations



On the introduction page I updated a lot. First is changing the typeface size and color, followed by left aligning everything. It was suggested that I use less of the green color for text and changed the body text to a dark grey. It was also felt I had a lot of information on one page and to spread it out to give it space to breathe. So, I broke it up into two pages that separates the material. Part of these changes was to improve the hierarchy of the text to improve the flow of reading it.

 Before

After Part One  

 After Part Two

On the meal page instead of a button to “add points” I changed it to “scan receipt” this would allow a better form of adding points and would show the user is just not pushing buttons to add points to get a higher rating.

Before

After

One of the recommendations I got was to include something showing an item that falls out of the tolerances of the users. I made a “no go” icon to inform users this not something the application would recommend you eating.

Before

After

A few things I may have not mentioned before is the feedback that i felt did not benefit the application but note it anyway for awareness.

It was mentioned not to use green because of color blindness, This doesn’t mean someone don’t see the color but would not see it as the true color and most likely see as a shade of brown. I don’t think this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

That sliders don’t work well on mobile devises; With this being an experiment only, I feel the sliders show a better idea of what I am trying to express.

I was informed during the Worldwide Technology visit that I had broken a number of HIPA laws for the information I was asking for. Since this is not going past the prototype phase I don’t think I am going to did into the details I need for legally asking for personal information.

One of the recommendations was to move away from a point system and move to a badge system instead. Part of this was there was too many reward levels, but as with games like candy crush you never know how high a user will climb. This would be a complete rewrite of the program and didn’t want to restart that is a very similar system.

Last was to not have sign in on the opening page of the app. I personally feel that is a design choice because a number of apps I use have some form of log in on the first page.




Here is a link to the final version of my Culture Cuisine app

https://xd.adobe.com/view/ea7b4a66-9f94-4303-4473-74a7448d9d4b-9c4a/

User Testing

This week we had user testing with three different people, Here is who I reviewed my app with.

Hannah – Student

Students tend to be more adventurous with trying new things and tend to be more tech savvy than most people. Had some trouble with finding the next step but seemed get through it easily.

Hannah comments were

Maybe messing around with making icons for your "haven't tried yet" vs "tried it". I think some sort of emoji face or a picture of a before and after of a plate will make that section a little more playful. Also check to make sure you're giving the information on your screen room to breathe since there is a lot to look at per page.

Other than that, I think it looks good! It is a neat idea and I think your scoring system would encourage people to try new food.

Overall good feedback from someone that understands what I am trying for.

Tim and Katie – Worldwide Technology

They design things like this in real life, the feed back from them is what the world would push back on your ideas.

Tim was the original host, but Katie showed up and took over.

Spending over time going over the other students’ project so I gave them the best elevator pitch I could, and they reviewed the first few pages of the app. The feedback was very professional, way more than I could ever attain at the amount of time and training to complete the project.

Many aspects of the problems where seeing things that are guidelines that they felt was standard.

Issue one was green should not be used due to color blind people not seeing the color, then using a long on page as one of the first pages. On the instruction page, they felt center aligned type was difficult to read, font size was to small and again not to use green coloring. Many federal and corporate guidelines where spouted out I lost track of what she was complaining about.

The personal information pages were skipped over because they felt they would not, and no customer would give out they type of person information.  The map page was the final page tested and immediately could tell it was a false map, did not like having real details and commented they don’t want to see artificial places.

The feedback given was at a professional level that I feel we were not ready for. If they understood that before going in or better communication of expectations of the judging, the outcome would been better.

Felt like I was asked to build a go cart in two weeks with no instructions, then needed to ask Nascar drivers if I can race professionally with it.

Vanessa – Wife

She has always like to travel the world and try new foods in different cultures.

Went through most of the pages, liked the ideas of allergies and tolerances but questioned what a menu item would look like if they did have the issue; “Would the food be blocked or have some type of alert or warning about the issues that might arise.

Had the idea that in place of the points to use a badge system like Pokémon go, so it is more about collecting.

Question about how to get the points when purchasing the meal. Plan on placing a scan receipt page to help fix that.

Feed back was over all good, Like the idea of trying new types of food based on cultures she was not familiar with and feel I got some good recommendations from her. 

Design Write Up

After making minor changes to pages like formatting and adding buttons that should already been included here are a few major things that I changed in my wire-frame.

First is the instruction page, after getting feed back and thinking it over I found that including a instruction page might help people understand what the application was about.

It shows the levels of the "game" and gives a good over view of what the app is trying to do.

Next up that I added the the wire-frame is the friends page. As with most things in life, it makes it better is when you can challenge and beat your friends at something. This is a leader board showing your current placement with your friends with the same app.

Another thing that came up in my pear review of the wire-frame was to have some type of award page once you ate a meal, clearly showing what you just added, where you are currently and required points to the next level.

As a part of adding more and better detail, I went with showing the tolerances of the meal directly on the page it is discussing. Also added a plus sign to the food clearly showing you get points for going to the ethnic restaurant and additional points for the type of meal you select that will give you what you total will be.

Still need to come up with ideas how to add the information of receipts or some type of how they added new meals to the list.

Wireframe Prototype

Here is the link to the XD file for the Cultural Cuisine project.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/11e9df50-06dd-46bb-451d-462988a2a09f-67d8/

I wanted to make a app that allows people to experience other cultures through food. Hence the old saying of  "breaking bread" If people would try what others eat of authentic food from their original countries I think more people would get along.

User Experience

My user experience decisions started with understanding the users allergies and tolerances. With the app being focused on foreign foods that might have things that someone might avoid or impossible to eat do to not matching the users taste pallet.

Second is understanding the users background. If someone is very familiar with the foods from the Far East, the app should not award them for trying food of this type.

At the core of the app is an award system. This shows the user and other people how open they are trying foods that might never cross in front of them. 

A history of what was eaten and what points were collected is always good in a app that is all about collecting points for eating foods you are not comfortable with.

Final choice was to have a search that could pull up any type of information. It could be a restaurant, to a type of food to a cultural you want to understand before ordering food from there. Also would be included would be the different point levels for the type of food, restaurant or both.