SlideWave: Gesture Controlled Presenting
In week seven, we were tasked with building and testing a behavioral prototype for a Gesture recognition platform. This was a group project with four team members, and our time constraint was five days. We used Wizard of Oz testing to gather genuine reactions from our participants. This is a method of usability testing where researchers have one test moderator who acts as a behind-the-scenes crew to operate a system while the participant is made to believe that the system is fully functioning, while in reality, it is being controlled behind the scenes. We debriefed participants afterwards to ensure our testing was ethical, to gauge their responses, and to gain further insights into the experience.
Design
While brainstorming ideas for this project, we hoped to develop a unique product that would be useful for university students, since our user testing participants were likely to be university students. This led us to the idea of presentations.
Presenting a powerpoint is something that students do often to demonstrate ideas, show progress, and summarize work. While presenting, they must ensure that the slides are synced with the cadence of their speech. Presenting while simultaneously controlling the slides using a typical computer or remote can lead to awkwardness and inconvenience. SlideWave aims to make this interaction seamless.
SlideWave is a gesture recognition platform that allows the user to control a powerpoint presentation. Hand gestures allow the user to go back and forth between slides, point to things on the slides using a laser pointer, turn the screen off and on, and jump to the first and last slides.
For this prototype, we evaluated it on desirability, usability, and impact.
Desirability: The user feels that the hand controls make the presentation smoother and enable them to seamlessly and confidently switch between slides.
Usability: The user is able to use hand gestures to operate the presentation. The hand gestures are intuitive and clear.
Impact: Users no longer need to work with a device to switch slides, making presentations smoother and more engaging. Users also don’t need to purchase or remember to bring a pointer tool.
Sketches
Initial sketches of behavioral prototype and Wizard of Oz testing.
Sketches of hand gestures used in the demo slide show presentation.
Prototype
User testing session #1 and session #2
Facilitator, scribe, and wizard (documenter not pictured). Some of the slides used by each participant to interact with the product.
Analysis
After our user testing sessions, we asked our participants to answer the following questions:
How intuitive would you rate the product out of five? Why?
How would using this product affect your work?
How likely would you be to recommend this product to a friend?
We also showed the video of our user testing sessions with three design students. This consisted of one three-minute testing session, where students recorded their thoughts on the effectiveness of our behavioral test. Based on this, we gathered the following insights:
What Worked Well:
Viewers and participants felt the product would be useful to have in real life.
Asking participants what gestures they’d use before revealing ours is a good tactic for making intuitive design decisions.
Viewers could tell how the participants believed the interactions were real.
The introduction segment does a good job of explaining our product and testing process. One viewer noted how it helped them understand what the prototype was doing.
One viewer appreciated having two participants (while only one was required), as it was helpful for showing different reactions to the prototype.
Both participants felt that the laser pointer gesture was comfortable and intuitive.
Participant #1 mentioned the product would “help them to focus more when presenting, so you don't have to click on something that's physical.”
Participant #2 mentioned the product would make “going back and forth between keyboard, slide, and audience easier.”
What Needed Improvement:
Viewers would’ve enjoyed seeing the reveal at the end.
Both participants mentioned that the two-handed swipe to go to the first and last slides is not as comfortable, describing it as “awkward” (P2).
Participant #1 suggested using one finger to jump to the first page and five fingers to jump to the last.
Participant #2 suggested pointing with one hand towards their right to jump to the first page.
We concluded that our behavioral prototype was successful in communicating the use of the product and successfully gathered insight into how users would interact with the product. Overall, it could be improved by changing the gesture to navigate to the first and last slides, potentially using a pointing or hand-number method.
Our desirability statement was met because the users felt that the hand controls would make presenting smoother and easier.
Our usability statement was met because our participants were able to use the gestures to (albeit theoretically) operate the presentation. Users felt the gestures were clear and intuitive, even if they could be improved in some ways.
Our impact statement was met because users did not have to interact with multiple interfaces to control slides, and both participants mentioned that they appreciated the hands-free interface.
Reflection
Through this project, I learned about the importance of gathering genuine reactions from participants during a user testing session. Without genuine reactions, it is difficult to know if your design decision is sound. I had never conducted a behavioral prototype test before, and I learned that there is a lot of effort that goes into the preparation for the test.
One challenge that we ran into was the TV monitors that we used to present the slide show. We had planned on using Bluetooth to connect the Wizard’s laptop to the screen, but neither of the rooms that we used had Bluetooth. Before starting this project, I wish I had known that we would need to reserve a study room to conduct our testing sessions, because we could have done some research into study rooms that have Bluetooth. With our time constraints, there was limited study room availability when we went to book.
