9 - Re-design

During our re-design process, there were certain aspects of the console that needed further consideration that would improve our proposed design. The methods that we used to throughout this process includes:



• Questionnaires


• Heuristic evaluation


• Cognitive walk-through


• Focus groups



The results from these methods concluded that we need to modify some parts of our proposed design to suit the user requirements. These modifications are as follows:



• Parent control

  
  
  In our proposed design, The console did not have any sort of functionality that would allow the parent to control what is going on, such as downloading additional software(stories, nursery rhymes etc), changing the settings and so on. A suggestion was put forward to the parents through the questionnaire to ask whether a "Parental control" facility was appropriate. As a result to this question nearly all parents agreed to the suggestion to have a parental control facility as they felt this would be quite useful because they could have more control over their child.
  
  
  CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE POWERPOINT SLIDES FOR THE DESIGN OF THE PARENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM
  




• Stylus

  
  
  

  In regards to the cognitive walk-through evaluation process we discovered that when the child selects a colour in the drawing application there is no indication shown to the child of what colour they have selected. Therefore, we decided to incorporate an LED into the transparent stylus so that it would light-up depending on the colour selected.
  Above is an example of a light-up pen which is similar to what we are intending to use but as an alternative we will use a more chunkier pen with it lighting up at the nib with a transparent rubber. This will show the child more clearly what colour they have chosen. in the sense of lighting-up and not the shape of the pen.

  
  





• Progress bar

  
  
  
  
  
  
  As stated in the heuristic evaluation and the cognitive walk-through, there is no indication to the parent or child as to where they are in the story application and how many pages are left. To improve this facility, we decided to place a progress bar on the application as we felt this would be the most effective way to demonstrate to the child and parent how far they have progressed and how many pages are left in the book. As shown above it will be implemented on the top of the application to avoid confusion with the words lighting up.
  
  This improvement also applies to the gallery and music feature. In the gallery application it will be used for the same purpose as the story application and for the music application it will be used for the progress of a song and the length of the song. Additionally, we will also use the page numbering effect for this application to show the number of songs in application. e.g. Song 1 of 20. It will be placed on the top of the application to show consistency.
  





• Return button

  
  
  One of the major discussions we had was on either physically having a "Home" button or having a "Return" button on the touch screen. This issue was raised during the heuristic evaluation process which may possibly confuse the child as there was no specific way of getting out of the current screen. Having a home button would mean another button on the console which we did not want. The other option was to have a return button on the touch screen but not all applications needed this feature. In conclusion to this discussion we felt that placing a return button on the touch screen would be the most effective.
  





• Error message

  
  As pointed out in the heuristic evaluation there is a possibility of getting an error message when the camera memory is full and the child attempts to capture some more photos. At this point, a sensible error message should be displayed to the childlren whilst it's being read out to them:
  
  
  
  
  Then parents would have to log-in to the parental control program and empty some space by deleting some pictures.
  





• Templates

  
  
  During the discussion with the focus groups an issue was raised in regards to the camera application. The parents thought it would be a good idea to use templates with the camera as you would with a mobile phone. This will enable the child to choose a different template with the forward and backward buttons and use it with the camera.
  





• Certificate

  
  
  Another idea in which would be beneficial to the child would be to have some sort of reward system where the child would be recognised for getting answers right. We thought giving the child a star every time they completed an exercise successfully would be a good reward. Once they had received a certain amount of stars they would be awarded a certificate. Above is an example of how a certificate would look. If the child was to achieve 1-5 stars they would receive a bronze award. If the child was to achieve 6-9 stars they would achieve a silver award and if the child was to achieve 10 stars they would achieve a gold award. These certificates will be stored in the Gallery so they can be printed by attaching a printer to the console later on.
  
  







• Menu Consistency

  
  Whilst discussing the consistency and standards point of the heuristic evaluation we thought it might be a good idea to have a welcome menu to each section. This is already the case for the stories and music section and we thought it might be a good idea to use it throughout. After discussing it further we realised that menus for sections such as the alphabet and numbers section would be inappropriate. We then thought about getting rid of welcome menus for all sections but they are essential for the stories section. We concluded it would be best to keep the menu set up as it is. Whilst it's not as consistent as we'd like, we do think this is best possible layout and makes the most sense.