Caveat My screen calibration is screwed up, so things weren't contrasty enough, which contributed to more confusion than necessary. Particularly with respect to selection states and rollover feedback.

S October 26, 2005

• Profile
• Mac user
• "Mom" category
• Small business owner looking for x-platform, shared, read-write calendar solution
• Doesn't use any calendar now. Not familiar with iCal.

• Results
• Tried drag and drop to overlay calendars
• Didn't get they were checkboxes
• Didn't get when she was checking versus unchecking (Mitch was right)
• Didn't understand how to make a calendar appear on top. Thought you did that by the order in which you check the calendars. As in the first calendar I check is the calendar on top. Which is actually the opposite of how it works.
• Didn't comment on rollover and checked states being different from collection icon
• Tried to overlay calendars with Cmd-Click

• Problem with test Should have just asked her to explore the sidebar on her own, rather than assigning her a task. she didn't really have a chance to get comfortable with just switching between calendars and seeing events appear and disappear.

K October 28, 2005

• Profile
• Mac user
• "Mom" category
• Independent consultant not dying for a calendar solution
• Doesn't use any electronic calendar, possibly not even paper-based

• Results
• Did not notice the checkbox rollover (mostly due to my screen calibration being off)
• Ironically, if the user-defined collections had also had collection icons, a more jarring switch might have caught her attention more
• Did not distinguish the checkbox on the left as a separate widget from selecting the collection name
• Tried to overlay calendars with Cmd-Click
• Got the overlays conceptually, immediately as soon as I guided her to notice the checkmark on rollover. Didn't have the same problems as N below about what calendar was on top and which events were saturated versus not saturated.

N October 28, 2005

• Profile
• Mac user
• "Dad" category
• Small business owner looking for x-platform, shared, read-write calendar solution
• Doesn't use iCal, but has been using Palm calendar for 10 years but still feels like he has no idea how to use it
• Only uses calendar to plot out business trips. Does not store individual events.

• Doesn't really understand when to single click versus when to double-click
• Did not understand that movable splitters on Mac have a "circle" on them

• Results

• Faceted Sidebar
• Intuitively understood that the App bar buttons were filtering the sidebar collections.
• Understood that the All app area was a combination of Mail, Tasks and Calendar

• Overlaying calendars
• Did not think the OOTB collections changing on hover to the checkbox icon was weird
• Did not understand the icon on the left was a separate widget from the collection name.
• Tried to overlay calendars with Cmd-Click
• Once I guided him to the checkbox widget, he continued to be confused as to why some events were saturated and others weren't saturated. He didn't intuitively understand that the "selected" collection was the one that was on top and more saturated. He saw it as a color change as opposed to a "saturation"

• At one point, he accidentally checked the My calendar collection, but still couldn't figure out how to "overlay calendars"
• When I asked him how he might get rid of the My calendar collection from the calendar view, he unchecked the collection
• Then I asked him how to overlay calendars again and he said he had no idea
• I asked him again, how did he turn off the My calendar collection
• He said, by clicking here: and proceeded to click on the "My calendar" collection name, which of course, brought the "My calendar" collection up
• I think the combination of a) not understand what overlaying calendars means and b) not distinguishing between clicking on the collection name versus clicking on the checkmark
• He felt the white checkmark gave him the impression that he had already checked it off
• He didn't notice for that the white checkmark disappeared when he moused off a selected collection
• He suggested animating the white checkmark to make it clear that he hadn't already checked it off just by selecting the collection, but I wonder if that would get annoying after a while

• Navigation
• Understood how to move from Week view to Day view and back
• Immediately understood what the busy-bars meant

• In a week view that had only 2 events, he thought the "darker" event was the selected event, not the lighter event. [Known problem.]
• Thought that the arrows in the main-cal navigated by month, not by week at first
• Tried to click on the Month label in both the mini-cal and the main-cal to navigate (expected a Month view)
• Did not understand why using the arrow keys in the mini-cal didn't affect navigation in the main-cal.
• Did not understand to click on the dates in the mini-cal to navigate, suggested rollover feedback to tell him the dates were a hotspot
• Did not figure out to pull the splitter above the mini-cal to see more months, though he asked for the feature

• Detail view
• Stamping feedback was too slow. Kept stamping and unstamping so quickly that the fields would appear and disappear and make it seem like nothing happened. This was compounded by the fact that right now on the Mac, there's practically no feedback for having activated a mark-up bar button.
• He figured out though, once I asked him to just single click that the button he clicked on made it possible for him to send the event.

• Problems with test
• Did not create calendars and events on his own.
• Screen calibration is screwed up
• I'm wondering if I should ask people how they think they can make a calendar "stick" rather than asking them to overlay calendars, which if they've never used electronic calendars, they won't really understand what that means or what that looks like.