TINK - sketching product experiences of connected objects

Evaluation - 101
related to an entity before adding the
second one.
3.4 The monitor view, meant especially for
testing purposes, can also be very useful
in the beginning of the process as it might
give the designer relevant insights for the
continuing of the project.
4) Openness and level of
visibility
4.1 The platform provides different level of
accessibility:
As discussed during in the section on the
user test, TINK helps designers having an
overview on the system and at the same
time allows the designer to go in to the
detail of the interaction. Since the building
blocks are not fixed, the behaviour of every
single block can be personalized via code.
The platform also supports the ability to
separately test each and every single
aspect of the interaction.
4.2 The software helps designer deconstruct
the envisioned interaction in different
parts: The users testing the platform had
no difficulty identifying the type of entities
that they needed in their design. However,
the division of the actions into building
block was not always done as expected:
while engineering are used to the division
in functional building block, designers
tent to talk about the interaction with the
system on a bigger level of abstraction.
Suggestions on how to improve the design
according to the requirement are provided
in the recommendation section of this
chapter.
4.3 The software was developed based on
open source software and hardware, all the
code produced for the project can be found
on GitHub.
The possibility of operating the software
prior to the electronic being connected
is an important feature envisioned in the
design that unfortunately could not be
tested.
5) Usability
5.1 The platform provides users with
several ways to get feedback on the status
of the network’s hardware. The entities in
fact visually display when they are not
properly connected to the platform.
5.2 Moreover, whenever a building block is
executed, visual feedback is presented to
the user showing the value of the message.
5.3 The usability of the platform presented
several issues during the user test, most of
these problems however were connected to
the level of development of the platform.
The overall usability experience of the
platform was positive.