Here’s my slides of wireframe & app map:
For the in-class user test last week, I learned these:
- The paper prototype I printed was too small and not the actual size of the phone, this will affect the user test.
- My user indicated that when her task is done, there’s no way to return to the beginning and start the next task. (I fixed that at the second iteration)
- My user suggested that in the timer settings, I can provide the function for users to save multiple timers as presets, so they can just turn on the desired timer when needing it again next time. (I’m still considering about this point — more user test needed)
We spoke about this briefly in class, but it does seem like quite a lot to ask someone to mount a camera above their stove just for monitoring boiling, so I’ve been trying to think through ways to mentally justify this or other adjacent options. What if this was a smart stove and a camera and other sensors were built in to it? What if you were exploring controlling the stove controls in addition to the just taking in data? Or, if you want go with a more simple approach, perhaps you do a phone/watch app that allows the camera of the phone to watch the pot and sends notifications to the watch app.
If you were doing a ‘smart’ stove, you could have it detect boiling (perhaps by a camera, perhaps by some vibration monitoring) and then either auto adjust the high heat down to lower for simmering and/or you could alert the user’s phone at that moment to ask them to change the heat through an interface on the app.
Or if you’re going for the phone/watch idea, then perhaps the moment of boiling you notify the watch.
In either case the idea of the timer is interesting, but it needs to be clear if the timer is for while boiling or while waiting for the pot to boil or both. And while the timer is going, it’d be nice to know if the simmering/boiling has stopped or gotten high again when I want it at a certain level.
In case you’re unfamiliar, there’s a famous idiom that says “a watched pot never boils.”
So, I think you need to clarify concept a little bit first to be able to thin through your interface. If it’s as you have it or stove specific, then there are only ever one or how many ever burners on the stove that you can track, so you don’t need to create a blank ‘new monitor.’
I also think you don’t need to give people so many options for their timer. Just stick with one sound/vibration on for now.
You also need to keep it clear that boiling/simmering/boiling over are different states, and it’s only boiling over that is the bad one. The others are useful if you want them. How do you indicate which is happening and when.
If you’d like to explore an watch app, let me know, I can give you some tips for that.