Week 4 Lecture Exercise

What components are relevant to driving behavior? 

The thing that I found most interesting about this exercise was the level at which different people within the group considered a component relevant. Personally I took the approach that the only truly relevant components were Steering wheel, accelerator, brake (clutch if manual) and gear stick. It was assumed from the picture that the actual car shell / motor / wheels were going to be included in any break down. But there were many more that the group came up with including:

• Key
• Handbrake
• Seat / Seat belt
• Mirrors
• Instrument panel (speedo, tacho) 
• Lights / indicators / hazards
• Horn
• Air conditioning
• Cup holders
• Windscreen wipers  

For me a lot of these were luxuries, as I drive a car made in the 60's with no AC, no left hand mirror, no tacho. However, It is easy to see what while some of these may not be core to the cars function they could be core to the driving experience.

What are the interactions of those components with the driver when driving? 

Steering Wheel - Turing the wheels of the car to change directions
Accelerator - Depressing the pedal with your foot to increase speed
Brake - Depressing the pedal with your foot to slow down
Gear stick - Automatic there is not much interaction apart from car start and stop. If Manual constant.
Key - At car start and stop turning the key, inserting the key, removing the key
Handbrake - Hill starts (woo!) parking
Seat belt - Pull down and across shoulder when entering car.
Mirrors - Checking during regular driving and particularly in lane changes or reversing
Instrument panel - Frequently demands attention from eyes to check speed or revs.
Lights - Turn on or off in bad weather (could be automatic)
Indicators - Flick tree up or down to indicate to other road users wanting to change directions
Horn - Push interaction (seldom used hopefully)
AC - Could be many, air flow control, temperature control

What would you test? How would you test?

For this second part we looked more at redesigning an aspect of the image below rather than testing the existing elements.

The idea from our team was to replace the accelerator with a camera which would accelerate the car to the speed limit as long as the driver had their eyes on the road. Once the eyes were off the road for a certain period of time the car would stop accelerating (even apply the break).

The idea to test this concept was to set up a simulated car experience with a steering wheel and dashboard but show a user a car trip. Their reactions would be monitored by a camera which would detect the position of their eyes. Every time they looked away the video would stop. The idea was to test attentiveness to discover the amount of time that was appropriate for a driver to take their eyes off the road (to check mirrors for example) without suffering the deceleration.

Alarm Clock Horizontal vs Vertical vs Diagonal prototype

Alarm clock application for your smartphone. Can set, edit & delete multiple alarms Can daisy-chain alarms - if one is allowed to ring out, another is activated automatically Can set different tones for different alarms Shake phone to snooze Design & describe a horizontal, a vertical & a diagonal prototype for this application

Horizontal Prototype

Horizontal prototypes are feature rich but very shallow and are designed to show the full scope and capabilities of a product without necessarily having the interaction behind them. An example of a horizontal prototype for this style of alarm clock would be a few screens of perhaps options where users could see the ability to set edit and delete alarms (with multiple alarms pictured). Another sketch could show the advanced options menu where daisy-chain settings and alarm tone settings could be found. The user might not be able to actually change these settings or set any alarms but the prototype can communicate the type of interactions the design would facilitate.

Vertical Prototype

A vertical prototype is the opposite of a horizontal prototype. It is designed to show the depth of an interaction rather than the breadth of possible interactions. Vertical prototypes allow users to complete a walkthrough of a specific task. An example of a vertical prototype for the alarm clock would be a series of screens mock ups which allowed a user to complete the setting on an alarm. The first sketch could be of a blank screen with a button saying new. Then another screen with a scroll that allowed the user to specify a time. The last screen may have been similar to the first with some form of feedback to show that the alarm had indeed been created successfully.

Diagonal Prototype

The diagonal prototype aims to capture the best of both worlds. It provides both some scope and some functionality without representing the full capabilities of the intended design. While it feels like horizontal and vertical prototypes would be highly effective at testing certain situations, the diagonal prototype is the 'working' prototype. It contains enough scope and functionality to complete a generalized scenario (not a strict task), it strikes me as the type that would be used most in usability testing. 

Going back to our alarm clock example a diagonal prototype could be a series of sketches or an interactive PDF (something more hi-fidelity) which allowed users to create, edit, and delete alarms. However, options to daisy-chain or change alarm tones would not be available. In this sense it would be the working prototype and after testing a vertical prototype for these functionality they could be bolted onto the diagonal (working) prototype.