Final Video + Paper + Thanks

 Here it is! Tortemail!
http://youtu.be/txP1BXILPAU

Big thanks to Nikash Singh, our facebook friends for completing our survey on a Saturday night rather than going out drinking, the user testers/our European friends we bugged on Skype, and the architecture students that got into our tests in the Architecture Labs of the Wilkinson Building - University of Sydney, Hanley Weng, Kendrick Khoo, Mark Mitchell, and finally to Martin Tomitsch for teaching us for more than a year, and giving us attention on Twitter, it made us warm and fuzzy inside.

#TEAMSACHERTORTE #TORTEMAIL

Summary

We started as Spicy Mail.

Then Speed Mail.

Then Hot Tamaile.

Then  finally Tortemail.

:)

TESTING: High Fidelity Mockups

User Testing

We set our users a set of concrete tasks and did a walkthrough, wizard of oz, style testing

• answer the new email
• access the new email
• examine their facebook updates
• compose a new email
• delete an old message

• in our user testing, this part of the scenario was really unclear, as the circle was no longer a tangible piece of paper and our users (3 in total) did not immediately recognise what it was
• they were also apprehensive to click on it as it possesses no cognitive affordances, the mail icon was then added to show that new mail was received, and most of the users enjoyed this when they saw the revision
• we'd love to do more testing but we simply ran out of time, but this was the major issue in getting users to utilise the program in the first place :(

• All users could recognise the chronological order of the chain, but it was still unclear somewhat that the links on the chain were email messages
• the folders, on the other hand were very clear to the users, as they follow familiar email formats
• the new message button was also very clear, all users
• Some users found the attachment underneath the question jarring in mental flow, however, most were just keen to answer the question yes or no, jumping to no because they don't know the guy, as was to be expected.
• All users could correctly drag the message into the trash

• all users saw how to manipulate the question and answer, also where to enter the recipient and subject info.
• Users were satisfied with the interface, but the icons were a little unnatural to them, however they were willing to spend time working it out once they were in the system.

We'd love to work on this some more if time permitted :(

TESTING: Paper Prototype

• we walked two users through and observed whether they could discern what the buttons meant when they switched them around
• whether they perceived depth (the stacks), that there were multiple emails underneath
• that the filters made logical sense to them

SYNTHESIS: (✿◠‿◠) the mental model (◕‿◕✿)

Made up a cheeky little Mental Model, mapping our users behaviours with functionality in our solution.

SYNTHESIS: ¸¸.•*¨*• STORYBOARDS/PERSONAS ¸¸.•*¨*•

SYNTHESIS: User Personas

User Persona 1. Studious Sam

Sam is a 21 year old student studying full-time at University. He has 3 different email accounts out of which he uses 2 regularly. Sam spends around 0-5 minutes per day just checking his emails. He will often check on his smartphone or his smartphone will notify him. He will usually reply later when he has access to a desktop. He often has quite a few emails related to university and will often reply to those and include attachments. His other email account is personal and he often receives emails pertaining to receipts/paypal confirmations, service updates and social media notifications. He often will not bother to read these or only skim through them and will simply keep them in his inbox. The sender is more important to Sam rather than the subject, and will read or not read emails based more on this factor.

User Persona 2 . Busy Beth

Beth is a 24 yr old who studies full-time at University and also works as a graphic designer part-time . She receives many emails relating to either her university studies or her work. She spends up to 10 minutes per day checking emails. She will often reply to work emails first and these often will contain text and attachments of her work to her boss/clients. She will often group her university and work emails together and try to reply to both fairly quickly. She has 2 email accounts, one for university and one for everything else eg work, social media. She will often skim through many of her other emails and leave them in her inbox eg Social Media alerts. She will always read emails related to money/finances however.