28.8.08: Report on Findings of www.eviscape.com with Florian

User with no previous experience on Eviscape. However, he appears to be an experienced internet user. He generally gets online to read articles and email, but doesn't really use the internet for social networking.

Inviting the user: Mao first invited the user through the "Invite a friend to Eviscape" link on the control panel. However, after about 5-10 minutes, the invitation had yet to arrive in Florian's inbox. Mao then invited the user through the "Members" link on from her MaoBlog node, which was promptly received in his inbox. This is the invitation email that I will shortly be addressing.

www.eviscape.com login page: While waiting for the first invitation to be received in Florian's inbox, the user came to the www.eviscape.com login page. He didn't get a sense of what Eviscape is from this page or of what actions he could perform in the site. He remarked that it looks like it's still in the alpha stage due to the titles of the very first evis in the "browse evis" sections, which are always the first links posted on a page. He doesn't click to read any of the evis at this point, but rather clicks to browse more options in the site. At this point, as he has not yet registered, he remarks that the design looks very clean, and at one glance has an idea of the structure of the site.

Email: The objective of the email is clear: it's inviting him to join the profile "MaoBlog". However, what is not so clear is what he's actually joining. What is the purpose of the site? Why he should join? What can he do on the site? He expected a description of whether you can create a profile (or some other actions) on the site. However, when he reads "...you can act on behalf of a profile"...he has to take a leap and guess what that means: groups of people have profiles and if he's a member of a group, then he's a member of a profile. 

Registration: CSS is off on this page. The Login information is on top, and the registration information comes under that (so that the user has to scroll down the page in order to access the registration form). He reads the terms of service. He chooses to keep his username and full name private. When asked about this, he replies that he's pro-privacy and if he doesn't know why he should disclose it, then he chooses not to. 

Membership activated: Notices that the header color has changed, and that he's logged in with his chosen user name. The design, reminiscent of an email inbox, gives him some clues about how to proceed on the site. The clues include seeing the members and filters links on the side. He also notices that he seems to have 2 user accounts: one of which is his person account, and the other is the strange group which he doesn't seem to know anything about but joined anyway. 

He clicks on his user name in the control panel, as there is a number next to it. He assumes that this number tells him the number of messages in his account. After landing on his node home page, he sees the column titled "inbox", which he assumes to be public messages, as he has received so many after just registering onto the site. See the "What's Up" box at the top and remarks that this is probably a method to send out public messages, but as he doesn't have anything to say, he continues wandering around the site.

Speakers button: Assumes that from this list, he can choose from whom he wants to get chatter messages.

Listening/Stop Listening: From these links, he remarks that it looks like he can listen with both of the accounts (his personal one and the MaoBlog that he is now a member of), but what he doesn't understand is what difference it makes with either or none. He makes the supposition that if he's in more groups, then perhaps this becomes relevant. He continues on without testing his hypothesis.

Evis Content: He wants to see the content of the site and clicks on the "browse evis" links along the top. One of the topics shown is "UI Design". He scrolls up and down the page and sees that the they are arrange chronologically, with the most recent at top. He clicks on the first evis. Once the page loads, he sees what an evis contains and remarks that you can probably do a lot with this: post things, write stuff, attach pictures, upload video and audio...He says, "it smells a little like twitter with the chat stuff." 

Write Evis: He clicks on the "Write/Upload..." link underneath the browse evis in order to write an evis. The problem now is that he doesn't really have a task in mind. This action could have been performed to see a new page design (to see what else the site could offer him) or to search for some direction on the site. In either case, the page loads up and he says that he normally wouldn't have written anything at this point because he's not sure:

1. who gets it
2. how it's published
3. how it's posted
4. why it's posted
5. where it's posted.

As this is a user test, he lets us know this, but still doesn't post anything. However, if he knew:

1. more about the site
2. the purpose of the site
3. the type of people on the site
4. the conventions on the site
5. how you're supposed to use the site,

then he would be more comfortable posting onto the site.

Informing the user: At this point, the user appears to have taken a good grasp on the basic concepts of the site. However, as there have been no explicit instructions on how to use the site (as opposed to descriptions of what he could do, as found on the invitation email and help page), he gets the feeling that he's missing something, and he's not quite sure what. It's not that something seems to be missing, but rather that he hasn't grasped the whole yet.

Member Home Page: The 9 nodes show up. He clicks on the 1 node that he is familiar with: MaoBlog. He looks at the page for a bit, then goes back. Clicks on a different node: Bart Simpson. He then goes onto the Help page.

Creating a New Node and Searching: After reading the help page, he sees that people are arranged by interests in the profiles. He goes to create a new node page, titled "Test Users", but then reconsiders as the idea comes to him that perhaps it has already been created. He conducts a search and evis with those search terms pop up. He at first doesn't realize that these are evis and not nodes. This happenstance occurs a few times. 

Listening: When attempting to subscribe to Eviscape User tests, he clicks on the necessary links/buttons, but is taken back to his node home page. This confuses him, as he doesn't immediately notice the change between nodes. What causes great confusion and frustration, however, is that he does notice the change in page design. The pages have different buttons along the header and speaker icons, but seems otherwise alike. He navigates back and forth a few times.

Speakers/Members: Doesn't understand the difference between the two.

Current/Default Node: Likes the idea of such transitivity. Despite the color coordination on the control panel, he's never quite sure which node he's on at any given moment. He's also not quite sure whether the node he's viewing is a node of which he is currently:

1. a member
2. a viewer
3. an owner.

Would like ownership of one node that has ownership of all the other profiles that he joins.

-mao

Mao and I took a user test with Fl today which was most useful!

We started by testing various network cables in the side office / kitchen!

Following this, we tested the Invite People to Eviscape which didn't seem to send a message in time and so Mao invited Fl to her MaoBlog Profile, and this is where the confusion began!

Mao will no doubt fill in more details because she took copious notes but there seemed to be 3 main problems found:

1. A Node that you have in your control panel looks different depending on whether it is current or not. e.g. the What's Up might not be displayed.
2. When you subscribe to a node you are taken back to your node home page.
3. There is no sense of hirearchy. i.e. people are used to having one profile and possibly access to other "groups" but so far on Eviscape we have a flat structure where all Nodes are created equal.

To address 3), maybe we need to "merge" the Member with the "Primary Node" in the User Interface.

Thus we could have one area at the top (of the control panel) which contains some information / links for the Primary Node and Member. We also talked about preventing Member invites for this Primary Node so you don't invite someone to join your primary identity by mistake. But JT especially thought that this restriction should be overidable incase you register with MyCompany and then can't invite people which is a good point.

This is still one of the core UI problems we face. 

I've made a quick stab in the direction by moving the Primary Profile to the top of the page and changing the member name to "Overview". However, we would further need to change the grouping / indentation / separation of the info in the control panel. 

The primary node is calculated dynamically as having the same nod_name as either the mem_name or the mem_full_name (so currently there could be two).

On the positive side, Fl found the Write / Upload page easily which is a positive change!

Also missing was proper explanation (he eventually found the help page)

Another interesting point was that he didn't want to post untill he got the measure of the community.

Thanks Fl! - simon.