Design Alternatives
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DESIGN ALTERNATIVES Electronic Attendance System Joseph Ng Chow [ [email protected] ] Victoria Mui [ [email protected] ] Brian Shim [ [email protected] ] Veronica Wong [ [email protected] ] Dave Dearman CSC318 – The Design of Interactive Computational Media October 27, 2008
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Table of Contents PROJECT DESCRIPTION
4
REQUIREMENTS SUMMARY
5
Functional User Usability Environmental Technical
5 5 5 5 6
DESIGN SPACE
6
Difficult to Realize Requirements Tradeoffs Design Alternatives Overview
6 7 8
DESIGN ALTERNATIVES
8
Design Process Scenarios Scenario 1: The Daily Attendance Scenario 2: Emergency Lockdown Storyboard Touchscreen Interface Description Rationale Illustrations Assessment Stylus Interface Description Rationale Illustrations Assessment Keyboard Interface Description & Rationale Illustrations Assessment
8 8 8 9 12 13 13 14 15 17 18 18 19 20 23 25 25 26 28 Page 2 of 30
REQUIREMENT MODIFICATIONS
29
Functional User Usability Environmental Technical
29 29 29 29 29
ADDITIONAL USABILITY CRITERIA
30
Memorability Flexibility Predictability
30 30 30
APPENDICES Group Responsibilities Breakdown Appendix A: Paper Prototypes Appendix B: Raw Data Appendix C: Prototype Interview Protocol
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Project Description After our research in G2, we have solidified our vision for the Electronic Attendance System (EAS). Our studies have shown that the current Trillium system that is used throughout the Toronto District School Board comes with three shortcomings that undermine the integrity of the student attendance system. (1) The machine readable paper that is scanned into the system is designed in a way that makes it easy for the user to make mistakes resulting inaccurate records. (2) It requires student couriers to deliver class attendance to the administration office, causing them to miss class and burdening them with responsibilities that are irrelevant to their studies. (3) Attendance forms are taken down to the office specific times in the day. Consequently, only the teacher or the office is aware of a student’s presence at a given time making it difficult to determine a student's whereabouts in an emergency situation.
The general application of EAS is to facilitate school attendance systems by addressing all of these issues. By designing a simple device that transmits student records electronically in real-time, we eliminate the need for a student courier, and all concerned parties will have up-to-date student records. Teachers will take attendance through an electronic panel that is populated with students from the class list. If a student arrives late, the teacher will correct the student's attendance record as opposed to sending them down to the office to update their status. The attendance record and any status updates will be transmitted to the administration office immediately, where it is processed. Administration staff can then identify the students that are late or absent without a note, and address these cases. Teachers and administration staff are our target users, but students and parents will also benefit from EAS. In particular, through this proposed attendance system, students will lose less class time and parents will know where their children are at all times.
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Requirements Summary Type of Requirement
Functional Requirements
Key Requirements
•
Provide an up-to-date record of student attendance to school staff at all times.
•
Offer teachers an intuitive and fast way of taking student attendance.
•
Offer administration staff a way of quickly and accurately performing their tasks regarding late and absent students.
•
Act as a means of communication during emergency situations (e.g., lockdowns).
Target User
Primary and Secondary school staff who are responsible for maintaining
Requirements
student attendance records are required to have the following traits: •
Have basic knowledge and experience with using technological devices like Automated Teller Machines (ATM), cell phones, and/or computers …etc.
•
Do not have severe disabilities and/or impairments that will affect their ability to use technology.
Usability Requirements
•
Product design and interface must be intuitive so users can use the system with little or no special training.
•
Allows users to access features and menus through minimal system interactions; these include: screen touches, mouse clicks, button presses…etc.
Environmental
•
The school environment must have an encrypted wireless connection.
Requirements
•
Classrooms and facilities have power via dedicated power lines at the location where the device is to be installed.
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•
Product needs to be portable in order to meet the needs of users in
Technical
cases of emergencies (e.g., school fires), allowing staff to carry around
Requirements
an up-to-date copy of student attendance for the entire student body. •
Product must be of a reasonable weight in order to support the portability requirement.
•
Product needs to be durable enough to withstand everyday usage.
•
Product needs fast and intuitive means of acquiring input data from the users.
•
Product needs to have a clear way of representing results and output to the users.
•
Support text-based messaging communication between system outlets within the school system (emergency situations).
•
Device must be able to run on both battery and AC power.
•
School must have a database in which the product can send the attendance data to. This database must be secure, reliable, and backed up on a regular basis.
Design Space Describe the design space of the potential interfaces for your system. What requirements may be difficult to realize? In light of the user requirements we derived earlier, there are associated implications that are difficult to recognize. For example, the many technical requirements will be costly to schools that don’t already have them as a part of their facilities. Through an interview conducted earlier in the study1, it has been brought to our attention that one of the key requirements that we need to support is silent communication between the administration staff and the teachers during emergency situations. We have inquired about our participants’ current emergency procedures, and they have expressed a need for a way to synchronized attendance records between classrooms and the administration office. Aside from that, it is hard to hypothesized what other information needs to be communicated between the two parties. In practice, threats are hard to predict, as a result the system needs to be adaptable to real life situations. To illustrate: if we only want a list of safe students, a quick way to check off all the students will suffice; if a student is hurt, we need to way for teachers to request medical assistance. The more situations that we can predict,
1
See interviews in the appendices for more information
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the more controls we can integrate into the design to facilitate communication. To help us recognize these needs, we will create scenarios to simulate usage in an emergency. The issue of how and where teachers take attendance is also hard to realize. With paper attendance sheets, it is easily transportable; teachers can take attendance at their desk, at the front of the room, or take it outside if they are holding a session in the courtyard. It all depends on the nature of the class and teacher preferences. The issue of portability arises from transferring the attendance to an electronic system. How much weight can one carry? How long can they carry it for? Is the attendance taken while standing or sitting? In our designs, we have made assumptions given the demographics we collected through our questionnaires and the observations that we have made during our visits.2
What are some tradeoffs that you should explore? How could your interface support some tasks easier than others? When designing our system we explored three major tradeoffs:
•
Device size versus visibility/portability •
The size of our device affects the visibility of the content as well as the portability of the device itself. The bigger the screen, the more students the device can display at a time. However, a large device is cumbersome to carry for outdoor classes and in emergencies.
•
Data integrity/security versus convenience of use. •
Data integrity is vital in keeping an accurate record of student attendance. Thus, the system needs to prevent unauthorized users from modifying the data; however, there is a tradeoff between the level of security measures and the ease with which updates can be made. For example, a login screen is typical of most modern computer systems, but it is troublesome to be required to login every time a student is late.
•
Simplicity of input device versus efficiency of task performance •
Although there are many ways in which the user can input data and commands, we want to minimize the amount of interactions the user has with the system in order to accomplish a task. Choosing one input device over another can simplify certain tasks while complicating others. For example, an audio input device is intuitive for taking student attendance by calling out each student’s name, but updating student records will require a series of special voice commands. To help us make our design decisions, we will test different devices that simplify the performance of core functions.
2
See interviews in the appendices for more information
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Describe the design alternatives that you considered exploring and then give a brief description and justification of the three (or more) alternatives that you did explore. Three design alternatives we have considered include:
•
Touchscreen interface
•
Stylus interface
•
A Keyboard and touchpad interface
These designs will be discussed in detail in the next section.
Design Alternatives Design Process There are two important notes regarding the following section:
1. We have decided to use the same scenarios in all of our designs to illustrate how the system works. Being consistent in the scenarios will enable us to test how well each design alternative meets the needs of our users as well as how they compare against each other. One design will most likely be superior in one aspect, but weaker in another. The tradeoffs of the design alternatives will be discussed in detail in the assessment section of the individual designs.
2. We have created high-fidelity representations of our paper prototypes in order to provide a concise presentation of all the features. To encourage honest feedback, we took a set of low-fidelity prototypes into the field. These are included in the appendices.
Scenarios Scenario 1: The Daily Attendance Perspective 1: Regular Attendance in the Classroom It is a Thursday morning at Morningwood High School. It is 9 a.m. and the bell rings for classes to begin. Meanwhile, Joseph rushes to school after accidentally sleeping in. He runs down the hall and opens the door to his first class, computer science with Mr. Michael Tao. Unfortunately, the clock reads 9:30 a.m.; he is late. Mr. Tao stops his lesson on algorithm complexity to acknowledge Joseph. Mr. Tao speaks, “Take your seat Joseph.” Luckily, Morningwood had adopted the new Electronic Attendance System (EAS) the previous month. Otherwise, Joseph would have had to go to the main
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office to be signed in. Mr. Tao walks over to the EAS terminal and changes Joseph's status in the attendance. Using the EAS, Mr. Tao does the following: (Requirement Set 1) •
Enter his username and login to authorize himself.
•
Select the class that he is currently teaching and display the class list.
•
Mark students ‘present’, ‘late’ or ‘absent’ on the class list.
Mr. Tao finishes changing Joseph's status and resumes his lesson. The clock reads 9:32 a.m. Perspective 2: Administrative Responsibility “BEEEEEEEEEEEP!” It is 10:01 a.m. and first period classes have just ended. It is time for VicePrincipal Joanne Varty to check the attendance for the previous period. She logs onto EAS to call the parents or guardians of those bad students who were either late or absent that period. By logging in as an administrative staff member, she is able to: (Requirement Set 2) •
Display a list of all late and absent students along with their reason for tardiness or absence.
•
Provide a way of contacting the parents/guardians of late and absent students.
Scenario 2: Emergency Lockdown It is a Monday afternoon at Greenwood Public School. A storm looms in the distance while all the students are busy learning. In the main office, secretaries, principal and vice-principal alike are going on about their regular administrative duties. Joanne, the vice-principal, is one such individual and is currently dealing with the issue regarding tainted hotdogs served at last week's staff barbeque. Every so often, she glances up to look at the clock in her room. When she takes a second to look at the surveillance video of the school's exits, she notices something out of the ordinary. She sees an unidentifiable man enter the school concealing something in his jacket. With the possibility of it being a weapon, she announces over the intercom, “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Immediately, one of the school secretaries, Margaret, locks the main office door, turns off the lights and closes the blinds on all windows. Meanwhile, the other secretary, Veronica, calls the local authorities. The sounds of doors closing begin to be heard throughout the halls of the school. Different groups of people are isolated within the school. Perspective 1: The Classroom “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Mary Reynolds, a grade 3 teacher, hears the announcement and acts. After locking the door, turning off the lights and covering the windows, Mary quiets her class and urges them to sit quietly on the ground, and away from the door and windows. She goes over to the EAS terminal and begins to take the attendance once again. In an emergency, the EAS responds by:
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(Requirement Set 3) •
Providing an up-to-date class list of which students are present that day.
•
Allowing the user to take the attendance with this list as if it was a regular class by marking students as safe or missing.
•
Standing by for notifications from the administration office
After completing the attendance with EAS, she realizes that little Angus is not in the classroom. She then remembers that he had left the room to go to the bathroom. She glances down at the console again and sees a notification telling her that Angus is safe. Her heart is at ease again after skipping a few beats. The EAS was able to: (Requirement Set 4) •
Notify the teacher of the location of any students of theirs who have been adopted into another classroom.
Perspective 2: The Adopted Child “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” The main lights in the bathroom cut out, activating the emergency flood lights. Consumed by fear, Angus begins to panic and his eyes begin to water. He stumbles out of the bathroom with tears streaming down his face bawling loudly. Mrs. Johnston notices him alone in the hall and immediately rushes him into her classroom, locking the door behind her. Putting her arm around his shoulder, she quietly asks, “What is your name? Who is your teacher?” After hearing his answer, she walks over the EAS panel and inputs his information and does the following: (Requirement Set 5) •
Inputs her own emergency attendance
•
Adopts little Angus.
Perspective 3: To Those Whom it May Concern “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Mr. Andrew Jackman hears the announcement and encourages his class to move to the corner of the room away from the door and sit quietly. Victoria Mui, a grade 5 student, hears her teacher’s orders and obediently follows them. As she heads towards the corner, she slips on a book titled “The Irony of the Fall Season”. She attempts to steady herself, but lands awkwardly on her ankle. “Owwwieee ,” whines Victoria. Mr. Jackman goes over to Victoria and asks her what is wrong. She explains to him that she injured her ankle. Mr. Jackman heads over to the EAS terminal. Before he takes the attendance, he sends a message to the office requesting medical assistance. He promptly receives a response telling him that the necessary preparations have been made and that help is on the way. Using EAS Mr. Jackman was able to: (Requirement Set 6) •
Communicate with the main office silently.
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•
Have medical aid prepared ahead of time in an emergency.
Perspective 4: The Main Office Hub Meanwhile in the office, the principal and the secretaries are monitoring the emergency attendance records generated by the EAS. The vice-principal, Joanne, picks up the phone and calls the authorities outside in the hopes of briefing them on the current status inside and providing them with the current student attendance. Using EAS, Joanne is able to: (Requirement Set 7) •
Generate an up-to-date list of missing and adopted students in other classrooms
There are only 2 students unaccounted for, while the rest are in their own classroom or safe in another teacher’s room. After updating the emergency task force outside on the situation, Joanne too is briefed on the plans going on outside of the school. “This is the special forces outside. We are going to make our move in five minutes. Let all teachers know that they are not to open their doors. Don’t even open it for a voice announcing they are with the police.” With this knowledge, Joanne again accesses her EAS panel and is able to: (Requirement Set 8) •
Send a global message to all classrooms from the office
All classrooms acknowledge that they understand. Everyone is prepared, and time has arrived for action.
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DESIGN 1: Touchscreen Interface Description Teachers will interact with the system through a custom electronic device that takes touch-screen user inputs. It will be a 14 x 10 x 0.25 inch portable display panel comparable to the “lid” of a 15 inch laptop. (Herein, we will refer to this panel as the Electronic Attendance Panel, EAP). Arguably, it is fair to say that the EAP strikes a balance between size and portability. Specifically, the dimensions are slightly larger than the current machine-readable paper used in schools, so content-visibility cannot be worse. We have also seen teachers work with laptops that are similar in size and greater in weight, so we know the panel can be handled with relative ease.ii The EAP will be mounted on the wall and it can be unlocked and removed at the teacher’s discretion. All panels in the building can also be unlocked from their mounting docks centrally, which will be useful in cases of emergencies like school fires and lockdowns. After teachers log into the system with their employee number and PIN, they will see an interface that will resemble the existing machine-readable paper. The screen that teachers will interact with most will be a digital replica of a class list with the options ‘Present’, ‘Late’ and ‘Absent’ beside each student’s name. Teachers will record each student’s status and submit the attendance records to the administration office electronically through the panel. Each session will expire after 10 minutes of inactivity. The administrative staff will interact with the system via their existing equipment, i.e. their computers. The set-up is similar to the Trillium system3 where the software generates attendance summaries of late and absent students after the attendance is scanned in. However, EAS’s attendance summaries will be generated and updated on-the-fly as each class’ attendance records are received from the teachers. Given a list of late and absent students and their valid reasons, the administration staff will have the option of selecting the students that will receive a phone call home. Calls will be made by the
3
The Trillium System is the current system of taking the attendance in the Toronto District School Board
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system at the staff’s command (from our earlier field studies, the times are around 10:00am and 2:00pm for elementary schools and at the end of the day for high schools)4. In emergencies, all security measures are dropped and the system will operate on “Emergency Mode”. The EAP will be populated with students that are present on the day. Teachers will redo attendance by marking off students that are safe—both students for whom the teacher is responsible, and students the teacher has adopted. At the same time, present students who are unaccounted for are populated on the screen of the homeroom teacher and of the administration staff. As soon as a missing student is found, their status is updated on 3 screens (the beneficiary teacher, the responsible teacher, and the administrative office). A feature of the Emergency Mode is the option of corresponding between the office and the classrooms with the use of text-based messages. A touch-screen keyboard will be made available on the EAP, and the administration will continue to use their computer. An additional feature for the administration staff is the ability to make global announcements to all classrooms.
Rationale We chose to create an EAP as opposed to implementing the system on a computer that may be available in the classroom because the computer is not portable (one of our key requirements), and it comes with many unnecessarily features. On the other hand, having the administration staff interact with the system through the use of their computers gives rise to two major advantages: (1) the administration staff can utilize EAS through equipment which they are already familiar with, and (2) it incurs no additional hardware costs. We chose to use a touchscreen input device because we want to mimic the interaction of a microwave, a system with which all our respondents were familiar5. In addition, it uses no peripherals. Users with minimal technological knowledge would not need to fumble with a traditional keyboard and mouse/touchpad. The option of mounting and unmounting the EAP gives teachers the flexibility of doing the attendance wherever they want. Hardware aside, the user interface of the class list is an evolution of the list on the existing machinereadable paper to minimize the learning curve. Making the “bubbles” touch-sensitive, we eliminate the inaccuracy that arises from filling in the bubbles incorrectly. 4 5
Refer to interview notes with administration staff member in the appendices. Refer to graph and surveys of technology familiarity
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One of the trade-offs we discussed earlier is data integrity versus user convenience. It is not so much of a problem with the administrative staff because they are constantly at their computers, and there are no students around their work station. Teachers; however, will be required to log in each time they take attendance or need to update a student’s status. If many students come in late throughout the period, updating the attendance records with this security measure will prove to be a hassle. Taking inspiration from the CDF system6, the system will log teachers out after an extended period of idleness. During an emergency, the system locking panels to the walls is automatically disabled and login screens are automatically unlocked to minimize the amount of time needed to synchronize the whole school. An up-to-date list of student attendance is provided to the teachers to relieve them from having to recall who was present that period. By the same token, it is only logical that the administration should get a list of missing and adopted students; there is no need to worry about students that are accounted for. We provide a way to text-message the office to replace the notify-office-by-phone (or by the public announcement (PA) system) procedure. The silent nature of text messages reinforces the lockdown procedures currently in place8. Because we do not know what kind of information needs to be exchanged, the alternative is to provide a messaging system that supports all kinds of information.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1:
6
The Computer Disciplines Facility under the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, Canada 8 See interviews in the appendices for more information.
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Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
Illustrating Requirements Set 3 and Set 4:
Illustrating Requirements Set 5
Illustrating Requirements Set 6
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Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustration Requirements Set 8
Assessment (Refer to prototype observation notes in the appendices for raw data)
Likes -
Testers like the imitation of the existing
Dislikes -
machine-readable class list.
-
The colour scheme was pleasing on the
Two of the three teacher testers expressed that the keyboard was hard to use.
-
They also voiced similar concerns about the
eyes. Changing the background colour to
scrollbars. Touchscreen requires reasonable
reflect the operating mode was especially
sized-buttons for the fingers. Consequently,
helpful.
only a few students can be displayed at a time.
-
The information that is presented shows a lot of relevant data.
-
There is no clear transition command to jump from one screen to another.
-
Regarding student adoption, a full-fledged keyboard is presented but only the student number is required. It was not a natural mapping between the control and the function.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data.
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We recognize that while a touchscreen provides an intuitive interface to the user in that it can be made to resemble instruments that they are already familiar with (like the machine-readable class list). Unfortunately, actually interacting with the system can be awkward. For example, we had our testers try to type on an iPhone® and two teachers commented on the lack of tactile feedback being a major drawback. While we thought we found a balance between device size and visibility, it did not hold up against testing. Two testers preferred smaller text so that more students can be displayed at a given time. This is hard to implement because the buttons need to be a reasonable size for the user to press them.
DESIGN 2: Stylus Interface Description This design utilizes a stylus sensitive touch screen. The EAP in this design will simply consist of an individual panel with a designated stylus docked onto the side of the touch screen. This design is essentially simulating the pencil-and-paper interaction that all users are familiar through an electronic panel and stylus. A unique characteristic of this stylus touch screen interface is that users are required to enter their employee number and chosen PIN in order to access the system. Since both of these fields consist solely of numbers, an on-screen number pad will be displayed on the sign-in screen. In order to enhance the performance of this EAP as teachers use it to take their class attendance, this interface has an auto-scroll and highlight feature. This feature highlights the next student that the teacher needs to mark the attendance for, and automatically scrolls to, and highlights the next student. During lockdowns, students that are in the hallways are instructed to move towards the closest classroom. Because of this, another teacher (rather than the teacher who is supposed to teach them at that time) often adopts these students. Therefore, EAS needs to allow these teachers to notify the administration office and the student’s designated teacher that they have adopted their student.
This
design allows the teacher to input the student’s student number into EAS, and the student’s status is automatically changed from “Missing” to “Adopted”. In addition, a notification message (which will require the teacher’s acknowledgement by pressing “Okay”) will be sent to the student’s designated teacher for that period, letting them know that their student is safe.
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As we have discovered at an earlier stage in this study, police has advised schools to not use any form of verbal communication during lockdowns. For this reason, the design of this EAP has incorporated a text-messaging system to allow teachers to communication with the administration office. This messaging system also allows the administration office to send messages to all of the school’s EAPs (in addition to sending a message to a specific teacher). A distinctive feature of this text-messaging system is that users can simply write their messages onto the screen using the stylus. Once the administration staff acquires a copy of the up-to-date attendance summary, they can simply click on the telephone icon next to the name of each student who is absent without a filed reason. By invoking this button, EAS will immediately make a phone call to that student’s parent/guardian through voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP).
Rationale This design focused heavily on what the users are already familiar with, in order to make this design as intuitive as possible.
In particular, because the design of this EAP mimics the pencil-and-paper
activity users are already familiar with, users will be able to use EAS through little or no special training. In addition, the interface that teachers use to take the class attendance, and interact with the most, resembles the student assessment sheets that teachers use to keep track of student performance. Hence, they will find this interface very intuitive.
Lastly, one of the key advantages of
using a stylus is that it allows for more precision. With this, buttons can be smaller and a smaller gap needs to be left between interactive components. With this design, users log in using their unique employee number that is assigned to them by the school board for which they work for, and a chosen PIN. By using an on-screen number pad, the area of the screen in which the user has to interact with is minimized, promoting usability. In terms of enhancing a user’s interaction experience, the auto-scroll and highlight feature assists users in completing their tasks, since it directs their attention towards the key component. For example, teachers will no longer lose their spot in a long list of student names in the middle of taking the attendance, even when they have to constantly raise their head to see if the student is present. In lockdown situations, it is very important that critical messages grab the attention of the users. In this design, messages informing a teacher that another teacher has adopted their student require the teacher to acknowledge it by pressing the “Okay” button. This ensures that messages that teachers need to be aware of are being brought to their attention. In terms of adopting a student during a lockdown, this design requires teachers to enter the student’s unique student number, and hence avoid ambiguity between students with the same first and last name.
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Another advantage of the way this design simulates the pencil-and-paper interaction users are familiar with is the fact that during lockdowns, users can quickly and easily write their messages into the textmessaging tool using the stylus. As administration staff analyze the attendance records of that day/period, they will have to perform various tasks. For example, administration staff are often required to make phone calls to the parents/guardians of students that are absent without a notice. With this EAP design, administration staff will have a more convenient way of making these phone calls since the calling system is integrated into EAS.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1:
Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
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Illustrating Requirements Set 3:
Illustrating Requirements Set 5
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Illustrating Requirements Set 6
Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustrating Requirements Set 8
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Assessment In assessing this design, we observed9 research participants interact with sample prototypes, and asked them regarding what they liked and felt were useful, and what they disliked and why. We also paid attention to when users had difficulty using the interface, and reflected upon these observations. In general, these observations and feedback can be summarized as follows:
9
See interview notes in the appendices for more information.
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Likes
-
The stylus and screen interaction is very intuitive.
-
When students are adopted during lockdown situations, using their student numbers is good
Dislikes
-
Text that is written with the stylus may not be correctly interpreted and recognized by the system.
-
since it is their unique identification.
The stylus may potentially be lost, requiring a replacement.
-
The colours and layout is visually pleasing.
-
When buttons are clicked, they have an outer glow,
utilize to make phone calls are ambiguous (users
returning good usability feedback.
were unclear as to whether the filled in telephone
-
-
Components that are not active/should be the
icons were the ones that can make calls, or the
center of attention are faded out, allowing the important/key components to grab the attention of
empty telephone icons). -
the users. -
-
The way the panel and screen has a portrait layout
The telephone buttons that administration staff can
Difficult to navigate between screens (e.g., there is no way of going back to the previous screen).
-
Buttons laid out along the top of the panel were not
allows for more information to be represented
as intuitive as they would be if they were placed
(especially when displaying long lists).
along the bottom.
The auto-scroll and highlight was able to help
-
The date along the top of the screen can be made smaller, whereas the student names could be made bigger (improve usability by adjusting font size based on usage and purpose).
-
The message box where users are to write their text-messages should be larger so they can write more at one time.
-
Users don’t have the option of manually logging out.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data. In summary, users generally liked the idea of using a stylus, but felt that there could be improvements on the interface. For example, navigation between tasks is crucial and needs to be focused on a little more. On the other hand, the auto-scroll and highlighting feature, visual aesthetics, and usability feedback were successful, as all four participants commented positively on them.
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DESIGN 3: Keyboard Interface Description and Rationale This design seeks to maximize usability while keeping costs low. The user uses a keyboard and touchpad to input data into the system. This system should be easy for the user to navigate as it resembles that of a web browser. This traditional touchpad and keyboard combination allows for much more precision when navigating menus on the screen. It would allow for smaller icons on the screen thus allowing more information to be displayed on the screen at one time. The widescreen format, though not traditionally suited to displaying lists, allows for a notification bar on the right hand side of the screen to be visible at all times. It will keep track of the history of any user action and allow the user to identify any mistakes that were made. In keeping with the web browser theme, this interface will feature tabbed browsing to quickly navigate between screens. A quick search function will provide access to any student’s attendance profile. A “Back” and “Forward” button will be available to switch between previously selected screens quickly. In the case of an emergency situation, the onscreen display will change color to reflect the high stress atmosphere. Also, during lockdown procedures, it is not convenient or safe to use audio communication. We saw this in our earlier research where it was pointed out during an interview that teachers are instructed not to make phone calls during a lockdown situation as it may alert an
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intruder. Thus, an instant messaging system has been implemented to communicate between classrooms and the main office. While this design resembles that of a laptop, its set of features is specific to attendance, thus eliminating the need for a powerful processor. With a lightweight processor it would mean less heat generated and longer battery life. As well, with a specialized device, its usability becomes greater since there are fewer functions to interact with. Teacher usage: The teacher interface will share the same structure as the administrative interface. In the interactions pane, the user will have tabs to switch between class lists according to period. In the event that a student reaches late, the teacher can easily update the student status to show “late” instead of absent. The communications tab will allow for the user to communicate with the main office and other classrooms. During lockdown situations, the device becomes unlocked from the wall, and battery power is activated. The teachers can then use the messaging system to communicate with the other teachers to account for missing students. Any students in the corridors at the time of the lockdown that have been adopted by other teachers can then be accounted for. The student lists will be viewable by all other teachers and updated in real time. Admin usage: In the main interactions pane though, the tabs will have different functions from the teacher interface. By default, it will list all of the users in the school with their respective attendance for the day. The tabs will bring up menus to filter the student results. The administration staff will be able to sort by grade, class and teacher. An additional option will allow the staff to sort by attendance record (i.e. Sort by Present, Late or Absent). The communication options will allow the user to communicate with the other rooms, give general announcements to the entire school and email a student’s parents/guardians. We chose email as the main method of communication to a student’s parents/guardians because an interviewee revealed that some students have been deleting messages left by the administration before the parents receive them10. The users also have the option to email the parents instead if calling at that time is inconvenient. In the case of a lockdown, the administration will also have the lists of the students who have been accounted for and students still missing. The staff can then use the message system and communicate with the teachers accordingly.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1: 10
See interview notes during interview with administration staff (in appendices).
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Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
Illustrating Requirements Set 3 and Set 4 and Set 5
Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustrating Requirements Set 6
Illustration Requirements Set 8
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Assessment
Likes
•
Users liked the fact that notifications were
Dislikes
•
unobtrusive. •
•
screen at any time. Would like an option to fit the lists full screen.
The filtering system to sort the student database seemed useful.
•
The standard keyboard makes it easy to
is seen. •
Liked the ability to navigate between screens easily.
Users complained that the display would have to allow for a greater degree of tilt
relay messages. •
Would like a pop-up of critical notifications to ensure that the message
The search function to find students is seen to be useful.
•
Display too small with all the options on
to make it more comfortable to use. •
The notification system requires email and some parents may not check / know how to use email.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data. Users found the interface to be intuitive and liked the fact that it resembled popular web browsers that they had experience with. They liked the idea of the notification bar to help them keep track of their work. Two users preferred the physical keyboard as opposed to a touch screen keyboard. One user pointed out to us that without some the physical keyboard that they were so used to, they would be much more prone to typing errors. Although two of the four users liked the easy access concept behind the buttons and menus, the other two complained that too much seemed to be going on.
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Against our initial rationalization, the extra features, although helpful, restricts the amount of information that can be presented.
Requirement Modifications Functional There are no changes required in the functional requirements in our system. The main purpose of our system remains a means of taking the attendance in both regular and emergency situations. A clear and easy-to-use method of communicating information is still a key requirement.
User Assuming the system is ideal, the target users should be able to commit the use of the system to memory after extended use. Having to re-learn the functionality of the system constantly hinders the performance of it.
Usability After analyzing the feedback, we noticed that all 4 users that were tested particularly liked the background colour schemes of our prototypes. More specifically, the lighter neutral colours seemed to suite regular attendance taking, while the darker red colours for lockdowns gave a sense of urgency. From these responses, we see that a good colour scheme allowed the user to generally understand the situation without having to search the screen for a clue.
Environmental From the feedback from an administrative staff member, we understood that having to switch to a different device altogether just for doing the attendance would be a hassle. This is because much of their work is already done on a computer anyway. As a result, we extend our environmental requirements to include administrative staff having computer access so that the system can be implemented on them.
Technical The only modification to the technical requirements is a trade-off. After one of the teachers asked us about the size of the battery needed to power the device, we re-evaluated our requirements. Our device needs to be light enough to be carried, but only to the extent that the battery can still support its use for an extended amount of time.
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Additional Usability Criteria Memorability The usage of the system must be able to be committed to memory. After using the system a lot, the teacher should not need to think where to click next in order to do every day attendance. Every day tasks should not require the user to constantly be learning new things.
Flexibility The device needs to be able to support different levels of user skill. The tool should be simple enough to accommodate for a new user as well as fast for a very experienced user. For example, a new user may want to physically click through menus, while an experienced user may use quick key shortcuts.
Predictability Generally the system should be predictable when it is interacted with. For example, it would be quite awkward and counter intuitive if pressing the “message button” resulted in the device pouring you a cup of coffee.
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Page 1 of 30
Table of Contents PROJECT DESCRIPTION
4
REQUIREMENTS SUMMARY
5
Functional User Usability Environmental Technical
5 5 5 5 6
DESIGN SPACE
6
Difficult to Realize Requirements Tradeoffs Design Alternatives Overview
6 7 8
DESIGN ALTERNATIVES
8
Design Process Scenarios Scenario 1: The Daily Attendance Scenario 2: Emergency Lockdown Storyboard Touchscreen Interface Description Rationale Illustrations Assessment Stylus Interface Description Rationale Illustrations Assessment Keyboard Interface Description & Rationale Illustrations Assessment
8 8 8 9 12 13 13 14 15 17 18 18 19 20 23 25 25 26 28 Page 2 of 30
REQUIREMENT MODIFICATIONS
29
Functional User Usability Environmental Technical
29 29 29 29 29
ADDITIONAL USABILITY CRITERIA
30
Memorability Flexibility Predictability
30 30 30
APPENDICES Group Responsibilities Breakdown Appendix A: Paper Prototypes Appendix B: Raw Data Appendix C: Prototype Interview Protocol
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Project Description After our research in G2, we have solidified our vision for the Electronic Attendance System (EAS). Our studies have shown that the current Trillium system that is used throughout the Toronto District School Board comes with three shortcomings that undermine the integrity of the student attendance system. (1) The machine readable paper that is scanned into the system is designed in a way that makes it easy for the user to make mistakes resulting inaccurate records. (2) It requires student couriers to deliver class attendance to the administration office, causing them to miss class and burdening them with responsibilities that are irrelevant to their studies. (3) Attendance forms are taken down to the office specific times in the day. Consequently, only the teacher or the office is aware of a student’s presence at a given time making it difficult to determine a student's whereabouts in an emergency situation.
The general application of EAS is to facilitate school attendance systems by addressing all of these issues. By designing a simple device that transmits student records electronically in real-time, we eliminate the need for a student courier, and all concerned parties will have up-to-date student records. Teachers will take attendance through an electronic panel that is populated with students from the class list. If a student arrives late, the teacher will correct the student's attendance record as opposed to sending them down to the office to update their status. The attendance record and any status updates will be transmitted to the administration office immediately, where it is processed. Administration staff can then identify the students that are late or absent without a note, and address these cases. Teachers and administration staff are our target users, but students and parents will also benefit from EAS. In particular, through this proposed attendance system, students will lose less class time and parents will know where their children are at all times.
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Requirements Summary Type of Requirement
Functional Requirements
Key Requirements
•
Provide an up-to-date record of student attendance to school staff at all times.
•
Offer teachers an intuitive and fast way of taking student attendance.
•
Offer administration staff a way of quickly and accurately performing their tasks regarding late and absent students.
•
Act as a means of communication during emergency situations (e.g., lockdowns).
Target User
Primary and Secondary school staff who are responsible for maintaining
Requirements
student attendance records are required to have the following traits: •
Have basic knowledge and experience with using technological devices like Automated Teller Machines (ATM), cell phones, and/or computers …etc.
•
Do not have severe disabilities and/or impairments that will affect their ability to use technology.
Usability Requirements
•
Product design and interface must be intuitive so users can use the system with little or no special training.
•
Allows users to access features and menus through minimal system interactions; these include: screen touches, mouse clicks, button presses…etc.
Environmental
•
The school environment must have an encrypted wireless connection.
Requirements
•
Classrooms and facilities have power via dedicated power lines at the location where the device is to be installed.
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•
Product needs to be portable in order to meet the needs of users in
Technical
cases of emergencies (e.g., school fires), allowing staff to carry around
Requirements
an up-to-date copy of student attendance for the entire student body. •
Product must be of a reasonable weight in order to support the portability requirement.
•
Product needs to be durable enough to withstand everyday usage.
•
Product needs fast and intuitive means of acquiring input data from the users.
•
Product needs to have a clear way of representing results and output to the users.
•
Support text-based messaging communication between system outlets within the school system (emergency situations).
•
Device must be able to run on both battery and AC power.
•
School must have a database in which the product can send the attendance data to. This database must be secure, reliable, and backed up on a regular basis.
Design Space Describe the design space of the potential interfaces for your system. What requirements may be difficult to realize? In light of the user requirements we derived earlier, there are associated implications that are difficult to recognize. For example, the many technical requirements will be costly to schools that don’t already have them as a part of their facilities. Through an interview conducted earlier in the study1, it has been brought to our attention that one of the key requirements that we need to support is silent communication between the administration staff and the teachers during emergency situations. We have inquired about our participants’ current emergency procedures, and they have expressed a need for a way to synchronized attendance records between classrooms and the administration office. Aside from that, it is hard to hypothesized what other information needs to be communicated between the two parties. In practice, threats are hard to predict, as a result the system needs to be adaptable to real life situations. To illustrate: if we only want a list of safe students, a quick way to check off all the students will suffice; if a student is hurt, we need to way for teachers to request medical assistance. The more situations that we can predict,
1
See interviews in the appendices for more information
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the more controls we can integrate into the design to facilitate communication. To help us recognize these needs, we will create scenarios to simulate usage in an emergency. The issue of how and where teachers take attendance is also hard to realize. With paper attendance sheets, it is easily transportable; teachers can take attendance at their desk, at the front of the room, or take it outside if they are holding a session in the courtyard. It all depends on the nature of the class and teacher preferences. The issue of portability arises from transferring the attendance to an electronic system. How much weight can one carry? How long can they carry it for? Is the attendance taken while standing or sitting? In our designs, we have made assumptions given the demographics we collected through our questionnaires and the observations that we have made during our visits.2
What are some tradeoffs that you should explore? How could your interface support some tasks easier than others? When designing our system we explored three major tradeoffs:
•
Device size versus visibility/portability •
The size of our device affects the visibility of the content as well as the portability of the device itself. The bigger the screen, the more students the device can display at a time. However, a large device is cumbersome to carry for outdoor classes and in emergencies.
•
Data integrity/security versus convenience of use. •
Data integrity is vital in keeping an accurate record of student attendance. Thus, the system needs to prevent unauthorized users from modifying the data; however, there is a tradeoff between the level of security measures and the ease with which updates can be made. For example, a login screen is typical of most modern computer systems, but it is troublesome to be required to login every time a student is late.
•
Simplicity of input device versus efficiency of task performance •
Although there are many ways in which the user can input data and commands, we want to minimize the amount of interactions the user has with the system in order to accomplish a task. Choosing one input device over another can simplify certain tasks while complicating others. For example, an audio input device is intuitive for taking student attendance by calling out each student’s name, but updating student records will require a series of special voice commands. To help us make our design decisions, we will test different devices that simplify the performance of core functions.
2
See interviews in the appendices for more information
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Describe the design alternatives that you considered exploring and then give a brief description and justification of the three (or more) alternatives that you did explore. Three design alternatives we have considered include:
•
Touchscreen interface
•
Stylus interface
•
A Keyboard and touchpad interface
These designs will be discussed in detail in the next section.
Design Alternatives Design Process There are two important notes regarding the following section:
1. We have decided to use the same scenarios in all of our designs to illustrate how the system works. Being consistent in the scenarios will enable us to test how well each design alternative meets the needs of our users as well as how they compare against each other. One design will most likely be superior in one aspect, but weaker in another. The tradeoffs of the design alternatives will be discussed in detail in the assessment section of the individual designs.
2. We have created high-fidelity representations of our paper prototypes in order to provide a concise presentation of all the features. To encourage honest feedback, we took a set of low-fidelity prototypes into the field. These are included in the appendices.
Scenarios Scenario 1: The Daily Attendance Perspective 1: Regular Attendance in the Classroom It is a Thursday morning at Morningwood High School. It is 9 a.m. and the bell rings for classes to begin. Meanwhile, Joseph rushes to school after accidentally sleeping in. He runs down the hall and opens the door to his first class, computer science with Mr. Michael Tao. Unfortunately, the clock reads 9:30 a.m.; he is late. Mr. Tao stops his lesson on algorithm complexity to acknowledge Joseph. Mr. Tao speaks, “Take your seat Joseph.” Luckily, Morningwood had adopted the new Electronic Attendance System (EAS) the previous month. Otherwise, Joseph would have had to go to the main
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office to be signed in. Mr. Tao walks over to the EAS terminal and changes Joseph's status in the attendance. Using the EAS, Mr. Tao does the following: (Requirement Set 1) •
Enter his username and login to authorize himself.
•
Select the class that he is currently teaching and display the class list.
•
Mark students ‘present’, ‘late’ or ‘absent’ on the class list.
Mr. Tao finishes changing Joseph's status and resumes his lesson. The clock reads 9:32 a.m. Perspective 2: Administrative Responsibility “BEEEEEEEEEEEP!” It is 10:01 a.m. and first period classes have just ended. It is time for VicePrincipal Joanne Varty to check the attendance for the previous period. She logs onto EAS to call the parents or guardians of those bad students who were either late or absent that period. By logging in as an administrative staff member, she is able to: (Requirement Set 2) •
Display a list of all late and absent students along with their reason for tardiness or absence.
•
Provide a way of contacting the parents/guardians of late and absent students.
Scenario 2: Emergency Lockdown It is a Monday afternoon at Greenwood Public School. A storm looms in the distance while all the students are busy learning. In the main office, secretaries, principal and vice-principal alike are going on about their regular administrative duties. Joanne, the vice-principal, is one such individual and is currently dealing with the issue regarding tainted hotdogs served at last week's staff barbeque. Every so often, she glances up to look at the clock in her room. When she takes a second to look at the surveillance video of the school's exits, she notices something out of the ordinary. She sees an unidentifiable man enter the school concealing something in his jacket. With the possibility of it being a weapon, she announces over the intercom, “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Immediately, one of the school secretaries, Margaret, locks the main office door, turns off the lights and closes the blinds on all windows. Meanwhile, the other secretary, Veronica, calls the local authorities. The sounds of doors closing begin to be heard throughout the halls of the school. Different groups of people are isolated within the school. Perspective 1: The Classroom “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Mary Reynolds, a grade 3 teacher, hears the announcement and acts. After locking the door, turning off the lights and covering the windows, Mary quiets her class and urges them to sit quietly on the ground, and away from the door and windows. She goes over to the EAS terminal and begins to take the attendance once again. In an emergency, the EAS responds by:
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(Requirement Set 3) •
Providing an up-to-date class list of which students are present that day.
•
Allowing the user to take the attendance with this list as if it was a regular class by marking students as safe or missing.
•
Standing by for notifications from the administration office
After completing the attendance with EAS, she realizes that little Angus is not in the classroom. She then remembers that he had left the room to go to the bathroom. She glances down at the console again and sees a notification telling her that Angus is safe. Her heart is at ease again after skipping a few beats. The EAS was able to: (Requirement Set 4) •
Notify the teacher of the location of any students of theirs who have been adopted into another classroom.
Perspective 2: The Adopted Child “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” The main lights in the bathroom cut out, activating the emergency flood lights. Consumed by fear, Angus begins to panic and his eyes begin to water. He stumbles out of the bathroom with tears streaming down his face bawling loudly. Mrs. Johnston notices him alone in the hall and immediately rushes him into her classroom, locking the door behind her. Putting her arm around his shoulder, she quietly asks, “What is your name? Who is your teacher?” After hearing his answer, she walks over the EAS panel and inputs his information and does the following: (Requirement Set 5) •
Inputs her own emergency attendance
•
Adopts little Angus.
Perspective 3: To Those Whom it May Concern “Attention, code red lock down. I repeat, code red lock down. This is not a drill.” Mr. Andrew Jackman hears the announcement and encourages his class to move to the corner of the room away from the door and sit quietly. Victoria Mui, a grade 5 student, hears her teacher’s orders and obediently follows them. As she heads towards the corner, she slips on a book titled “The Irony of the Fall Season”. She attempts to steady herself, but lands awkwardly on her ankle. “Owwwieee ,” whines Victoria. Mr. Jackman goes over to Victoria and asks her what is wrong. She explains to him that she injured her ankle. Mr. Jackman heads over to the EAS terminal. Before he takes the attendance, he sends a message to the office requesting medical assistance. He promptly receives a response telling him that the necessary preparations have been made and that help is on the way. Using EAS Mr. Jackman was able to: (Requirement Set 6) •
Communicate with the main office silently.
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•
Have medical aid prepared ahead of time in an emergency.
Perspective 4: The Main Office Hub Meanwhile in the office, the principal and the secretaries are monitoring the emergency attendance records generated by the EAS. The vice-principal, Joanne, picks up the phone and calls the authorities outside in the hopes of briefing them on the current status inside and providing them with the current student attendance. Using EAS, Joanne is able to: (Requirement Set 7) •
Generate an up-to-date list of missing and adopted students in other classrooms
There are only 2 students unaccounted for, while the rest are in their own classroom or safe in another teacher’s room. After updating the emergency task force outside on the situation, Joanne too is briefed on the plans going on outside of the school. “This is the special forces outside. We are going to make our move in five minutes. Let all teachers know that they are not to open their doors. Don’t even open it for a voice announcing they are with the police.” With this knowledge, Joanne again accesses her EAS panel and is able to: (Requirement Set 8) •
Send a global message to all classrooms from the office
All classrooms acknowledge that they understand. Everyone is prepared, and time has arrived for action.
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DESIGN 1: Touchscreen Interface Description Teachers will interact with the system through a custom electronic device that takes touch-screen user inputs. It will be a 14 x 10 x 0.25 inch portable display panel comparable to the “lid” of a 15 inch laptop. (Herein, we will refer to this panel as the Electronic Attendance Panel, EAP). Arguably, it is fair to say that the EAP strikes a balance between size and portability. Specifically, the dimensions are slightly larger than the current machine-readable paper used in schools, so content-visibility cannot be worse. We have also seen teachers work with laptops that are similar in size and greater in weight, so we know the panel can be handled with relative ease.ii The EAP will be mounted on the wall and it can be unlocked and removed at the teacher’s discretion. All panels in the building can also be unlocked from their mounting docks centrally, which will be useful in cases of emergencies like school fires and lockdowns. After teachers log into the system with their employee number and PIN, they will see an interface that will resemble the existing machine-readable paper. The screen that teachers will interact with most will be a digital replica of a class list with the options ‘Present’, ‘Late’ and ‘Absent’ beside each student’s name. Teachers will record each student’s status and submit the attendance records to the administration office electronically through the panel. Each session will expire after 10 minutes of inactivity. The administrative staff will interact with the system via their existing equipment, i.e. their computers. The set-up is similar to the Trillium system3 where the software generates attendance summaries of late and absent students after the attendance is scanned in. However, EAS’s attendance summaries will be generated and updated on-the-fly as each class’ attendance records are received from the teachers. Given a list of late and absent students and their valid reasons, the administration staff will have the option of selecting the students that will receive a phone call home. Calls will be made by the
3
The Trillium System is the current system of taking the attendance in the Toronto District School Board
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system at the staff’s command (from our earlier field studies, the times are around 10:00am and 2:00pm for elementary schools and at the end of the day for high schools)4. In emergencies, all security measures are dropped and the system will operate on “Emergency Mode”. The EAP will be populated with students that are present on the day. Teachers will redo attendance by marking off students that are safe—both students for whom the teacher is responsible, and students the teacher has adopted. At the same time, present students who are unaccounted for are populated on the screen of the homeroom teacher and of the administration staff. As soon as a missing student is found, their status is updated on 3 screens (the beneficiary teacher, the responsible teacher, and the administrative office). A feature of the Emergency Mode is the option of corresponding between the office and the classrooms with the use of text-based messages. A touch-screen keyboard will be made available on the EAP, and the administration will continue to use their computer. An additional feature for the administration staff is the ability to make global announcements to all classrooms.
Rationale We chose to create an EAP as opposed to implementing the system on a computer that may be available in the classroom because the computer is not portable (one of our key requirements), and it comes with many unnecessarily features. On the other hand, having the administration staff interact with the system through the use of their computers gives rise to two major advantages: (1) the administration staff can utilize EAS through equipment which they are already familiar with, and (2) it incurs no additional hardware costs. We chose to use a touchscreen input device because we want to mimic the interaction of a microwave, a system with which all our respondents were familiar5. In addition, it uses no peripherals. Users with minimal technological knowledge would not need to fumble with a traditional keyboard and mouse/touchpad. The option of mounting and unmounting the EAP gives teachers the flexibility of doing the attendance wherever they want. Hardware aside, the user interface of the class list is an evolution of the list on the existing machinereadable paper to minimize the learning curve. Making the “bubbles” touch-sensitive, we eliminate the inaccuracy that arises from filling in the bubbles incorrectly. 4 5
Refer to interview notes with administration staff member in the appendices. Refer to graph and surveys of technology familiarity
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One of the trade-offs we discussed earlier is data integrity versus user convenience. It is not so much of a problem with the administrative staff because they are constantly at their computers, and there are no students around their work station. Teachers; however, will be required to log in each time they take attendance or need to update a student’s status. If many students come in late throughout the period, updating the attendance records with this security measure will prove to be a hassle. Taking inspiration from the CDF system6, the system will log teachers out after an extended period of idleness. During an emergency, the system locking panels to the walls is automatically disabled and login screens are automatically unlocked to minimize the amount of time needed to synchronize the whole school. An up-to-date list of student attendance is provided to the teachers to relieve them from having to recall who was present that period. By the same token, it is only logical that the administration should get a list of missing and adopted students; there is no need to worry about students that are accounted for. We provide a way to text-message the office to replace the notify-office-by-phone (or by the public announcement (PA) system) procedure. The silent nature of text messages reinforces the lockdown procedures currently in place8. Because we do not know what kind of information needs to be exchanged, the alternative is to provide a messaging system that supports all kinds of information.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1:
6
The Computer Disciplines Facility under the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, Canada 8 See interviews in the appendices for more information.
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Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
Illustrating Requirements Set 3 and Set 4:
Illustrating Requirements Set 5
Illustrating Requirements Set 6
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Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustration Requirements Set 8
Assessment (Refer to prototype observation notes in the appendices for raw data)
Likes -
Testers like the imitation of the existing
Dislikes -
machine-readable class list.
-
The colour scheme was pleasing on the
Two of the three teacher testers expressed that the keyboard was hard to use.
-
They also voiced similar concerns about the
eyes. Changing the background colour to
scrollbars. Touchscreen requires reasonable
reflect the operating mode was especially
sized-buttons for the fingers. Consequently,
helpful.
only a few students can be displayed at a time.
-
The information that is presented shows a lot of relevant data.
-
There is no clear transition command to jump from one screen to another.
-
Regarding student adoption, a full-fledged keyboard is presented but only the student number is required. It was not a natural mapping between the control and the function.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data.
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We recognize that while a touchscreen provides an intuitive interface to the user in that it can be made to resemble instruments that they are already familiar with (like the machine-readable class list). Unfortunately, actually interacting with the system can be awkward. For example, we had our testers try to type on an iPhone® and two teachers commented on the lack of tactile feedback being a major drawback. While we thought we found a balance between device size and visibility, it did not hold up against testing. Two testers preferred smaller text so that more students can be displayed at a given time. This is hard to implement because the buttons need to be a reasonable size for the user to press them.
DESIGN 2: Stylus Interface Description This design utilizes a stylus sensitive touch screen. The EAP in this design will simply consist of an individual panel with a designated stylus docked onto the side of the touch screen. This design is essentially simulating the pencil-and-paper interaction that all users are familiar through an electronic panel and stylus. A unique characteristic of this stylus touch screen interface is that users are required to enter their employee number and chosen PIN in order to access the system. Since both of these fields consist solely of numbers, an on-screen number pad will be displayed on the sign-in screen. In order to enhance the performance of this EAP as teachers use it to take their class attendance, this interface has an auto-scroll and highlight feature. This feature highlights the next student that the teacher needs to mark the attendance for, and automatically scrolls to, and highlights the next student. During lockdowns, students that are in the hallways are instructed to move towards the closest classroom. Because of this, another teacher (rather than the teacher who is supposed to teach them at that time) often adopts these students. Therefore, EAS needs to allow these teachers to notify the administration office and the student’s designated teacher that they have adopted their student.
This
design allows the teacher to input the student’s student number into EAS, and the student’s status is automatically changed from “Missing” to “Adopted”. In addition, a notification message (which will require the teacher’s acknowledgement by pressing “Okay”) will be sent to the student’s designated teacher for that period, letting them know that their student is safe.
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As we have discovered at an earlier stage in this study, police has advised schools to not use any form of verbal communication during lockdowns. For this reason, the design of this EAP has incorporated a text-messaging system to allow teachers to communication with the administration office. This messaging system also allows the administration office to send messages to all of the school’s EAPs (in addition to sending a message to a specific teacher). A distinctive feature of this text-messaging system is that users can simply write their messages onto the screen using the stylus. Once the administration staff acquires a copy of the up-to-date attendance summary, they can simply click on the telephone icon next to the name of each student who is absent without a filed reason. By invoking this button, EAS will immediately make a phone call to that student’s parent/guardian through voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP).
Rationale This design focused heavily on what the users are already familiar with, in order to make this design as intuitive as possible.
In particular, because the design of this EAP mimics the pencil-and-paper
activity users are already familiar with, users will be able to use EAS through little or no special training. In addition, the interface that teachers use to take the class attendance, and interact with the most, resembles the student assessment sheets that teachers use to keep track of student performance. Hence, they will find this interface very intuitive.
Lastly, one of the key advantages of
using a stylus is that it allows for more precision. With this, buttons can be smaller and a smaller gap needs to be left between interactive components. With this design, users log in using their unique employee number that is assigned to them by the school board for which they work for, and a chosen PIN. By using an on-screen number pad, the area of the screen in which the user has to interact with is minimized, promoting usability. In terms of enhancing a user’s interaction experience, the auto-scroll and highlight feature assists users in completing their tasks, since it directs their attention towards the key component. For example, teachers will no longer lose their spot in a long list of student names in the middle of taking the attendance, even when they have to constantly raise their head to see if the student is present. In lockdown situations, it is very important that critical messages grab the attention of the users. In this design, messages informing a teacher that another teacher has adopted their student require the teacher to acknowledge it by pressing the “Okay” button. This ensures that messages that teachers need to be aware of are being brought to their attention. In terms of adopting a student during a lockdown, this design requires teachers to enter the student’s unique student number, and hence avoid ambiguity between students with the same first and last name.
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Another advantage of the way this design simulates the pencil-and-paper interaction users are familiar with is the fact that during lockdowns, users can quickly and easily write their messages into the textmessaging tool using the stylus. As administration staff analyze the attendance records of that day/period, they will have to perform various tasks. For example, administration staff are often required to make phone calls to the parents/guardians of students that are absent without a notice. With this EAP design, administration staff will have a more convenient way of making these phone calls since the calling system is integrated into EAS.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1:
Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
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Illustrating Requirements Set 3:
Illustrating Requirements Set 5
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Illustrating Requirements Set 6
Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustrating Requirements Set 8
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Assessment In assessing this design, we observed9 research participants interact with sample prototypes, and asked them regarding what they liked and felt were useful, and what they disliked and why. We also paid attention to when users had difficulty using the interface, and reflected upon these observations. In general, these observations and feedback can be summarized as follows:
9
See interview notes in the appendices for more information.
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Likes
-
The stylus and screen interaction is very intuitive.
-
When students are adopted during lockdown situations, using their student numbers is good
Dislikes
-
Text that is written with the stylus may not be correctly interpreted and recognized by the system.
-
since it is their unique identification.
The stylus may potentially be lost, requiring a replacement.
-
The colours and layout is visually pleasing.
-
When buttons are clicked, they have an outer glow,
utilize to make phone calls are ambiguous (users
returning good usability feedback.
were unclear as to whether the filled in telephone
-
-
Components that are not active/should be the
icons were the ones that can make calls, or the
center of attention are faded out, allowing the important/key components to grab the attention of
empty telephone icons). -
the users. -
-
The way the panel and screen has a portrait layout
The telephone buttons that administration staff can
Difficult to navigate between screens (e.g., there is no way of going back to the previous screen).
-
Buttons laid out along the top of the panel were not
allows for more information to be represented
as intuitive as they would be if they were placed
(especially when displaying long lists).
along the bottom.
The auto-scroll and highlight was able to help
-
The date along the top of the screen can be made smaller, whereas the student names could be made bigger (improve usability by adjusting font size based on usage and purpose).
-
The message box where users are to write their text-messages should be larger so they can write more at one time.
-
Users don’t have the option of manually logging out.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data. In summary, users generally liked the idea of using a stylus, but felt that there could be improvements on the interface. For example, navigation between tasks is crucial and needs to be focused on a little more. On the other hand, the auto-scroll and highlighting feature, visual aesthetics, and usability feedback were successful, as all four participants commented positively on them.
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DESIGN 3: Keyboard Interface Description and Rationale This design seeks to maximize usability while keeping costs low. The user uses a keyboard and touchpad to input data into the system. This system should be easy for the user to navigate as it resembles that of a web browser. This traditional touchpad and keyboard combination allows for much more precision when navigating menus on the screen. It would allow for smaller icons on the screen thus allowing more information to be displayed on the screen at one time. The widescreen format, though not traditionally suited to displaying lists, allows for a notification bar on the right hand side of the screen to be visible at all times. It will keep track of the history of any user action and allow the user to identify any mistakes that were made. In keeping with the web browser theme, this interface will feature tabbed browsing to quickly navigate between screens. A quick search function will provide access to any student’s attendance profile. A “Back” and “Forward” button will be available to switch between previously selected screens quickly. In the case of an emergency situation, the onscreen display will change color to reflect the high stress atmosphere. Also, during lockdown procedures, it is not convenient or safe to use audio communication. We saw this in our earlier research where it was pointed out during an interview that teachers are instructed not to make phone calls during a lockdown situation as it may alert an
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intruder. Thus, an instant messaging system has been implemented to communicate between classrooms and the main office. While this design resembles that of a laptop, its set of features is specific to attendance, thus eliminating the need for a powerful processor. With a lightweight processor it would mean less heat generated and longer battery life. As well, with a specialized device, its usability becomes greater since there are fewer functions to interact with. Teacher usage: The teacher interface will share the same structure as the administrative interface. In the interactions pane, the user will have tabs to switch between class lists according to period. In the event that a student reaches late, the teacher can easily update the student status to show “late” instead of absent. The communications tab will allow for the user to communicate with the main office and other classrooms. During lockdown situations, the device becomes unlocked from the wall, and battery power is activated. The teachers can then use the messaging system to communicate with the other teachers to account for missing students. Any students in the corridors at the time of the lockdown that have been adopted by other teachers can then be accounted for. The student lists will be viewable by all other teachers and updated in real time. Admin usage: In the main interactions pane though, the tabs will have different functions from the teacher interface. By default, it will list all of the users in the school with their respective attendance for the day. The tabs will bring up menus to filter the student results. The administration staff will be able to sort by grade, class and teacher. An additional option will allow the staff to sort by attendance record (i.e. Sort by Present, Late or Absent). The communication options will allow the user to communicate with the other rooms, give general announcements to the entire school and email a student’s parents/guardians. We chose email as the main method of communication to a student’s parents/guardians because an interviewee revealed that some students have been deleting messages left by the administration before the parents receive them10. The users also have the option to email the parents instead if calling at that time is inconvenient. In the case of a lockdown, the administration will also have the lists of the students who have been accounted for and students still missing. The staff can then use the message system and communicate with the teachers accordingly.
Illustrations (of requirements—refer to Scenarios) For more detailed images, see appendices. Illustrating Requirements Set 1: 10
See interview notes during interview with administration staff (in appendices).
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Illustrating Requirements Set 2:
Illustrating Requirements Set 3 and Set 4 and Set 5
Illustrating Requirements Set 7
Illustrating Requirements Set 6
Illustration Requirements Set 8
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Assessment
Likes
•
Users liked the fact that notifications were
Dislikes
•
unobtrusive. •
•
screen at any time. Would like an option to fit the lists full screen.
The filtering system to sort the student database seemed useful.
•
The standard keyboard makes it easy to
is seen. •
Liked the ability to navigate between screens easily.
Users complained that the display would have to allow for a greater degree of tilt
relay messages. •
Would like a pop-up of critical notifications to ensure that the message
The search function to find students is seen to be useful.
•
Display too small with all the options on
to make it more comfortable to use. •
The notification system requires email and some parents may not check / know how to use email.
* Refer to the Appendix for interview information and raw data. Users found the interface to be intuitive and liked the fact that it resembled popular web browsers that they had experience with. They liked the idea of the notification bar to help them keep track of their work. Two users preferred the physical keyboard as opposed to a touch screen keyboard. One user pointed out to us that without some the physical keyboard that they were so used to, they would be much more prone to typing errors. Although two of the four users liked the easy access concept behind the buttons and menus, the other two complained that too much seemed to be going on.
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Against our initial rationalization, the extra features, although helpful, restricts the amount of information that can be presented.
Requirement Modifications Functional There are no changes required in the functional requirements in our system. The main purpose of our system remains a means of taking the attendance in both regular and emergency situations. A clear and easy-to-use method of communicating information is still a key requirement.
User Assuming the system is ideal, the target users should be able to commit the use of the system to memory after extended use. Having to re-learn the functionality of the system constantly hinders the performance of it.
Usability After analyzing the feedback, we noticed that all 4 users that were tested particularly liked the background colour schemes of our prototypes. More specifically, the lighter neutral colours seemed to suite regular attendance taking, while the darker red colours for lockdowns gave a sense of urgency. From these responses, we see that a good colour scheme allowed the user to generally understand the situation without having to search the screen for a clue.
Environmental From the feedback from an administrative staff member, we understood that having to switch to a different device altogether just for doing the attendance would be a hassle. This is because much of their work is already done on a computer anyway. As a result, we extend our environmental requirements to include administrative staff having computer access so that the system can be implemented on them.
Technical The only modification to the technical requirements is a trade-off. After one of the teachers asked us about the size of the battery needed to power the device, we re-evaluated our requirements. Our device needs to be light enough to be carried, but only to the extent that the battery can still support its use for an extended amount of time.
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Additional Usability Criteria Memorability The usage of the system must be able to be committed to memory. After using the system a lot, the teacher should not need to think where to click next in order to do every day attendance. Every day tasks should not require the user to constantly be learning new things.
Flexibility The device needs to be able to support different levels of user skill. The tool should be simple enough to accommodate for a new user as well as fast for a very experienced user. For example, a new user may want to physically click through menus, while an experienced user may use quick key shortcuts.
Predictability Generally the system should be predictable when it is interacted with. For example, it would be quite awkward and counter intuitive if pressing the “message button” resulted in the device pouring you a cup of coffee.
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