Report for Low Fidelity Prototype

Report Overview

Our goals were to note how users interacted with our prototype and see if our design choices and navigation were intuitive for users and useful. We wanted to measure the user experience on different tasks like navigating through the listing pages, favoriting items, and conducting an actual trade. A trade included the steps of finding a tradeable item, creating a trading proposal, conducting the trade with the physical Sonny Angels we provided, and reviewing the trade. We learned that some components we thought were straightforward were confusing and needed further instructions. We also measured adding an item to trade.

Key Takeaways

Thankfully, we learned and discovered lots of new information in our Wizard of Oz session. Firstly, we realized that our trading page’s ‘+’ button is a bit misleading. The group we worked with interpreted it as a connector between two buttons rather than a separate trading button. Additionally, we learned that the trading process didn’t have a very distinct way of differentiating between the screen you see and the screen that the opposing trader sees. Lastly, an individual who isn’t as involved in this community mentioned that it’s difficult for newcomers to know where Sonnies are categorized. Overall, it’s something that we didn’t address since our target audience is individuals who are familiar with this hobby, but it’s interesting to see and potentially support newcomers into the community.

Findings

The other group liked many aspects of our prototype and enjoyed the features we incorporated. They thought it was cool how we had a heart button to help the user track any Sonny Angels that they liked, and they could refer back to the Sonny in the favorites page later. We tried out different scenarios for a trade process, and the one worth noting was what happens when they meet in person and get scammed. Since the delivery process is in person and with no shipping, the traders can easily deny the trade and leave to warn other people of scammers, or they can leave a bad review for everyone to see. For the main focus of our project, which is to allow the users to trade, we brought in real Sonny Angels to allow the users to experience a trade. We let the group choose the Sonny Angel they desired on the home page, and then they offered Sonnies they believed to be of equal value. Overall, the other group seemed to like our design and gave very good feedback.

Useful Elements

Luckily, there were many design elements that we thought would remain in our next iteration of the design process. One key element we plan to keep is the general layout of the website pages. This includes the size of each design element, such as the buttons, images, and search bar, as well as the size of the words. Color-coding each button, especially when the buttons are clicked on to go to a certain category, is also necessary. Lastly, as mentioned, a few slides of our Lofi prototype do not have a differentiable way between what the trader sees and what the cooperating trader sees, the layout and the order of our design are relatively good and will be used for our next iteration of the design process.

Elements to Revise

We noticed a few inconsistencies in our prototype. These inconsistencies consisted of the following: a lack of clarity during trades regarding the current step of the trade, the lack of a button to create an item, and users asking for the message button to be larger during the confirmation process. There was also some confusion on whether the trade they offered was fair for the item so perhaps adding the market value estimate to trade pages might be helpful to consider. Adding these functions or revising them would create a smoother trading experience on our platform.