TINK - sketching product experiences of connected objects

Testing - 95
When developing experiential prototype
choices are made in order to adopt the
easiest and quicker way to get to an
artefact that is functional to the testing
of the experience. This most of the time
require the designer to make a compromise
between developing with the envisioned
technology or downscale the design due
to the difficulties of implementing a final
prototype.
The prototype used during the test did
not providing any kind of limitation as to
what kind of hardware could be connected
to it, or which kind of web-services could
be used. During the test, participants were
trying to implement all the details of the
interaction in the system diagram. However
a confrontation with the real limitation of
the platform would have made them reflect
and came up with more practical solutions
to achieve the same envisioned experience.
USABILITY
Participants found the interface
aesthetically appealing, and appreciated
its clarity and simplicity.
Several usability issues were however
discovered during the user test. Several of
these were bugs and interface design flaws
the designer had already been aware of.
The user test was fundamental in
uncovering other specific aspects of the
platform to improve.
Dragging
The test participants tried to use the drag
and drop gesture to perform actions that
were not supported by the platform, or
that were implemented differently.
One particular usability issue was
discovered in how the mouse was used
with the connection function.
When the mouse was being used to drag a
connection between to building block, it
was not clear where or when the mouse was
supposed to be released
The next chapter offers some
recommendations on how to improve the
platform’s gestural interfaces, which will
improve the usability of the drag and drop
gestures.
Consistency
The current design features a single button
with a plus (+) to add entity, which
after rotating the button by 45° degrees
becomes an x icon to close the same
panel. The little detail was not properly
understood by participants and took some
time to figure out that the same element
was both used to open and close the same
panel.
Order
Sometimes creating complex systems with
TINK resulted in a messy tangle of lines.
This doesn’t facilitate the comprehension
of the system diagram. A routing
mechanism should be proposed to avoid
this to happen.
Some participants also expressed the desire
to be able to rearrange the building blocks
around in order to be able to be able to
visually group blocks building blocks
together and make the representation of
the system diagram more free and at the
same time more comprehensible.