Chapter 4: Prototype Design and Implementation
4.1 User Scenarios
To begin the design process of a system to implement the four visual narratives, two user
scenarios were written to describe how users of the system would use the imagined final
implementation. User Scenarios are useful tools because they give a detailed account of
the user activities when using the system. They can help verify if the design would make
sense to the user and explain what user needs the design answers [39].
4.1.1 Scenario 1: Visiting a Museum and Constructing a Visual
Narrative
The first user scenario revolves around a user visiting a museum. In this scenario the user
is building a narrative visualization based upon what she experienced firsthand in the
museum. The two main goals of this user scenario are construction and reflection.
Amanda decides to visit the Museum of Nature with her family. She goes on a
Saturday and takes her children through all the exhibits in the Mammals section
of the museum. They take photos with their cameras and her children interact
with a couple of the interactive exhibits that have simple buttons to press and
knobs to turn. They also play with the interactive touch screen quizzes and spend
a long time looking at and talking about the life sized animals in various
dioramas. As she explores the museum, the museum app on her smartphone tags
pictures that she takes, saves audio and video that she records, notes the exhibits
she visits, and helps prompt and guide her along her itinerary. At the end of the
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day when she gets home she can use it to choose from several visualizations that
will offer an interactive presentation of her experience of that day.
4.1.2 Scenario 2: Sharing a Visual Narrative with Others
The second user scenario revolves around a user sharing their Visual Narrative with
others. In this scenario the user is looking at visualizations of a friend or family member
full of things they haven't experienced firsthand. The two main goals of this user scenario
are sharing and communication.
Reginald wants to visit the Museum of Nature while on vacation. He doesn't know
much about it and goes to its website and looks at a map of its floor plan. This
gives him an idea of what's inside and where everything is but not a great idea of
what the experience is like. He sees that he is able to browse the narrative
visualizations of others. He decides to view several to get a better idea of what the
exhibits are like to actually see in person and the different things people saw. He
sees that he can plan a tour using a web application on the website and then
follow it with an app on his smartphone. The app would also allow him to create
a visualization of his own. A few weeks later, when he returns home his family
want to hear about his trip. He shows them the narrative visualization that he
made and walks them through his trip.
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4.2 Prototype and System Scope
4.2.1 Prototyping
After reviewing the scope of the project and the resources and time needed, it was
decided that a full final version of the system would not be implemented for usability
testing. Additionally, the development of a prototype over a final version was the next
logical step in the process of the entire project. The MEseum study [8] had performed
proof of concept research to see how well the idea of the system would be received and
what features users wanted. This project continues that research by focusing on a subset
of those features, the timeline.
Almost all interaction design includes some form of iteration, and mock-ups and
prototypes are very useful in the design process to help evaluate the design and see if
there is room for improvement [35]. Thus a prototype was constructed in order to expand
the timeline feature of the MEseum study [8]and to answer the research hypotheses.
4.2.2 System Scope
While the user scenarios describe functionality that would be desired in the final version,
because a prototype was being built instead of a final version, the scope of the
functionality is less than it would be in a final version as described in the scenarios.
Specifically, the user did not visit a museum and instead it was decided that the museum
would be simulated.
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To this end, the functionality of the prototype was divided into two main sections, a
Virtual Museum that the user could use to explore the museum and gather data, and a
Narrative Visualization Constructor.