Prototyping & Usability Testing

This past week I was able to make progress in the physical aspect of my project. To start, I made sketches (see Fig. 1) of the two different ideas that I had for storing the different keepsake objects, one being a traditional box in the form of a chest and the other a shelf display. Although these two forms are similar in their ability to store the objects, they differ in terms of their accessibility. With the chest box, the user’s experience would be more direct in terms of accessing the objects & indirect in triggering the stories; objects would be immediately available for the user to pick up & touch and audible stories would be triggered when the drawers are opened. The shelf on the other hand provides a completely opposite experience where the access to the keepsakes is limited to strictly visual contact, yet the triggering of the keepsakes’ corresponding audio stories are activated through the press of a button.

Figure 1: Sketches of storage box vs. storage shelf

Following the sketching & logistical planning of the two different structures, I chose to prototype the shelf as it was easier to make and test quickly (see Fig. 2). When it came to testing the shelf, I chose to focus on receiving feedback centered around its physicality, the types of interactions that people would make with it, and any other thoughts they had about the user experience it afforded.

cardboard prototype of a shelf with speaker on the side, 2 buttons on each level, and lights built in the ceiling of each level — Figure 2: Cardboard prototype of shelf

The feedback I received included the following:

The shelf having visible technology makes it seem like it’s part of an installation or in a museum
An open shelf invites tactile interaction with objects, whereas placing something in glass and/or on a pedestal inadvertently tells someone that the object is significant, though touching is not okay.
The buttons are very hard to press; more sensitive buttons would be easier to press
It would be better to have audio preset to the appropriate levels (e.g. volume, pitch, etc.) versus giving the user control over the any of those settings

With this feedback, I was left to think about the following:

Consider the environment that the project is expected to exist (e.g. a home, museum, etc.) & how its appearance should blend in with the aesthetics of that space
Who is expected to have access to this project? What type of access do I want them to have?
What is the overall experience and/or feeling that I’m trying to create?

After processing the feedback and my thoughts, I decided to revert back the chest box idea but with some revisions. With the chest, the user gets to have a discovery experience, but instead of affording direct access to the keepsake objects, there would be a glass shield at the top of each drawer to limit the opportunity for touching the objects. This idea of people being able to touch the objects is something I’ve fought with myself over a lot, especially because I am dedicating this project to my family and keeping them as the target audience in mind, so I expect them to naturally proceed with caution. However, my desire to preserve the keepsakes for future family outweighs the desire to make the objects touchable, and quite honestly, I wouldn’t necessarily be upset if someone felt so passionate about an object that they broke the glass to have it :). In addition to changing the tactile experience, I decided to remove any visible indications of technology since the chest would be something that I want to blend in with a natural home environment. This means that the speaker(s) would need to be hidden, while still having the audio be clearly heard, and triggers for the audible stories won’t come from buttons, but a natural interaction like opening a drawer.

Making these decisions finally led me to seek out boxes I could use for the build in order to save time that would be loss to manually building a chest from scratch. Hours of google searches eventually led me to this chest available at a local hardware shop in Brooklyn, and after going to see it in person I was sold on it being the perfect box (see Fig. 3 & 4), especially because it was able to fit the largest and most fragile items. Though it is much larger than expected, I find that to be a plus as this project is intended to grow over time in terms of the number of keepsakes stored.

Video Player