Overview
By week 12, we had 3 design routes and we need to settle down on one for the programmers to implement. The design team analyzed all three and listed their pros and cons.
One of the designs is called ‘1+1+1’. It is a simple layout of the information on the webpage. It is our first design and our other designs are derived from it, but we’re concerned because we feel that there are a lot of repeated elements between pages. Another one is called ‘AB Magic’. We use a timeline as the first level filter, and use keywords and creators as the second level. When keyword filter changes, the creators also correspondingly change. It can accomplish a lot of the tasks, but it’s more complicated to understand by the users. The last one we called ‘Clarity’, and it is using one flow to solve as many problems as possible. No matter whether you start from keyword or creator, you end up with identifying the specific mod. While clearer, it can not accomplish all the task we have in mind.
The first one worked, but when iterating on it we found several problems. We decided to iterate and playtest the later two. Our client was out of office for the week so we had to reschedule with him. We were still able to playtest with our faculty and members from the Sims 4 development team.
Playtest Result
We found that people have more opinions on detailed design then the two designs themselves. It means both of the designs work and for the user it’s a matter of learning the tool.
One thing we noticed is that, for the AB Magic design, people need more effort to learn what it means for the different filters to change. We had to explain a few elements, but once we did, our playtesters felt they understood what we were trying to do.
Decision
The whole team together made the decision based on the following factors:
- The feedback we got
- The time limitation
- The risk of implementation
For the AB magic one, it seems harder to understand, but it’s really a cool idea. The determining factor that made us rule it out is because it’s super interactive and the process of fetching data is complicated and could end up being slow. Since we are getting everything from the database, it would take to much time to implement a data cache on the front end.
So we decided on making the Clarity, and modify it based on our feedback.