Prototyping 07/20/16

Week 3 & 4: Prototyping

During the last two weeks, we were focused on detailing the interaction flows of our final concept and planning our prototype evaluation. We made our decision to focus on the asynchronous collaboration experience between clients and designers based on two reasons. First, asynchronous communication is the most common channel in remote collaboration context. Second, it is easier to implement into prototype due to time and technical constrains.

The record of the first prototyping meeting.

Interaction Flow

To understand how our target user will use our solution, we created an interaction flowchart to show all possible interactions. 

The whole concept contains three main interaction flows, which are synchronous collaboration in the same virtual space, synchronous collaboration in separate spaces, and asynchronous collaboration between clients and designers. The asynchronous collaboration experience will be the main focus for our prototyping evaluation. 

Although we are still in the process of finalizing our research protocol, we have identified the big picture and direction for our prototype testing tasks and evaluation.

Prototyping Overview

After consulted with instructors, we began to discuss about which technology should be used to build our solution. In the meanwhile, we also brainstormed some research questions that we would like to answer.

Meeting notes from the second meeting

During our third meeting, we further put down all the requirements and functions that should be included in our prototype and split the work so we could start working. 

The second meeting mainly focused on two parts, which technology should we use, and who should be our participants.Since we are going to focus on client's needs, we determined that our target participants should be:

• Non-architecture background
• Has experience decorating home/workspace
• On the market for new houses or apartments (either currently or in the past year)
• Has experience working with architects or interior designers to design a space

And we decided that our prototype should have three basic functions.

• 3D sketching
• Object manipulation (translation and rotation)
• Full-scale and small-scale viewpoints

Further details of the prototype was discussed during our third meeting. We discussed and listed our all the details including where to get the resources, how will each function being used, how should we test our prototype, and how our prototype will answer our research questions.

Research Question Formation

On Wednesday and Thursday, we had a meeting with the instructors and sponsors. We presented our ideas and collected feedback, some feedback we got included

• Focus on big picture rather than interaction details
• Emphasize synchronous collaboration
• We should consider Wizard of Oz method

The meeting helped us revisiting our design concept and forced us to think about what is our design hypothesis, and how are we going to proof that our solution is better than the traditional method.

Design Concept

Based on the concept we discussed during the concept refinement phase, our solution is a model-based interface shared between remote collaborators that facilitates dialog and spatial understanding through the establishment of common ground.

Furthermore, stakeholders share the same virtual environment and experience different viewpoints to gain a full sense of scale while allowing real-time manipulation of the model.

Design hypothesis

Our design provides clients with 3D markup tools in a full-scale virtual space to help them better understand and communicate spatial concepts to designers.

Research Questions:

• What aspects of our design help collaborators establish common ground efficiently?
• How does our design differ from traditional mediums in terms of interactions?
• What elements of traditional mediums “map” well to a virtual environment?
• What challenges do clients face when using our solution?

Research Goals:

• Understand how clients will use our solution to illustrate their idea
• Understand possible challenges and learning curve of our solution
• Understand how successfully the solution helps clients communicate their design intentions to designers

Evaluation Plan

After we got our design hypothesis and research questions ready, we started to put down more details of how are we going to test the prototype.

Research Protocol:

1.Design with pen and paper on 2D medium

An empty floor plan and a list of requirements will be provided to the participant, and they will be asked to leave markup on the spatial arrangement on paper.

2. Design in VR

The client will first go through a tutorial to learn the basic controls in VR, then be placed in an empty virtual room with a list of requirements. They can sketch in 3D, manipulate objects, and jump between viewpoints to communicate their ideas.

3. Debrief and evaluation

The client will be asked to compare their experiences between using traditional pen & paper on 2D floor plan and using our solution. We want to understand what tools they prefer and why as well as any challenges they encountered during the session.

4. Expert evaluation

The client’s markup will be shown to the designer. The designer will be asked to evaluate the two different mediums to help us understand what aspects of our solution are the most effective and whether our solution helps the formation of common ground.

Documentation Methods: 

We plan to record video of the participants as well as screen recordings to capture the complete point of view in virtual space. We will also take notes during the sessions to record any particularly interesting insights.

Materials: 

For the prototype, we have made a floor plan of a 1B1B one-floor interior, and also built the virtual environment of the same interior in Unity. Both of them will be used for the testing in order to compare the 2D and 3D methods.

Prototype Demo

Finally, we had our pre-alpha version prototype ready. Although it is still pretty rough, we got all the functions we need for testing. The next step is to run some pilot study and start recruiting participants to evaluate our solution.

Reflection

Our prototyping phase began with extensive discussion to figure out what part of our solution should be built and evaluated.  While this was difficult to determine initially, our time constraints and interaction model made it clear that we should focus on asynchronous collaboration for our initial prototype.  Building our prototype in Unity was relatively straightforward and we were able to build the virtual environment and implement the basic functionality over a weekend.  Getting this first iteration completed also made it clear what features still needed to be added in preparation for our user tests.  Instructor and peer feedback on our presentation was positive and we are confident in moving forward with our prototype.