EVALUATION & TESTING

Screens of the
testing model
Usability tests

Fall 2007 I developed a simple interface to experiment with different data mappings (visual, textual and spatial). Flash testing models (SWF's) version 1 and version 2.

Results were not really surprising...
  • text was important and necessary both for information and as a familiar reference point.
  • visual/graphical representations (ie. shapes & colors) were useful
  • spatial representations were useful if they could be used in highly intuitive ways
 


Test results
System benchmark tests

Testing CPU and RAM usage for different file manager applications.

Actually these tests were more useful when I was considering a real file listening mechanism, before I moved to a periodic crawler. But the results may be useful in the future.
 

User survey

Conducted in November 2007 using surveymonkey.com. Questions were mainly about:
  • user satisfaction with current file management applications
  • comfort with new visual approaches to exploring similar data
Responses to the summary are summarized in the final paper.
Text file of survey questions. (RTF)