This week we went out to test our new prototype!
We ended up using an 8*8 LED matrix as our light source, which sat in the box that Dana made with Anni. We controlled the light from my phone via bluetooth.
We covered the messages that Dana and Anni printed with masking tape so that the message would only be visible when the lights were turned on. Here's what they look like on and off:
There were two options for the light: on-off (all LEDs on or all LEDs off), or lights with motion. We ended up testing only the on-off option because the LEDs were not bright enough in the middle of the day for the motion to show up clearly. This was an important lesson learned. I used an app on my phone to control the lights, and I turned the lights on just as each passenger approached the driver for maximal impact.
We tested out two different messages: "I am your driver :)" and "Have a nice day". We tested each message on two different buses. "I am your driver :)" was more successful.
There was also a big difference in the make of each bus, which strongly affected our experiment:
On the first bus, almost everyone that alighted noticed Dapi.
On the second bus, very few people noticed our prototype.
This is clearly because on the second bus, Dapi is out of the passenger's line of vision during the entire interaction. We need to ensure that our prototype sits within close proximity to the driver.
In general, our findings were not as good as they were in the last user testing. Even if we only look at Bus #1 where people saw Dapi, they did not react to it, and most passengers did not have positive interactions with the driver.
In class on Sunday we plan on discussing why the user testing went this way, and how we can improve Dapi to get those good results we saw last time.