Learner #3: Notes from VizAbility session

Learner #3 wasn’t initially clear on what could be clicked in the introduction. The slow reaction time of the software complicated her navigation through it. The introduction was a bit long for her. "Who are these guys?" she asked, seeming to want an introduction to the characters themselves. She listened to all of the overview interviews.

The first segment she went to was Drawing/Sketching. She seemed to like the introduction. She went through the entire gallery of examples. Next she visited Prototyping. She laughed at the interviews and appeared to enjoy them. "The people and their views are out of context," she commented, quitting prematurely. She clicked on all of the objects. "Hey try and prototype a toilet," she said in passing. Going to the warm-ups, she had a lot of fun trying them out, but mentioned that she didn’t "know how all of this relates to prototyping." She went through all of the warm-up exercises. She started the music and clicked on many of the possible options.

Then she visited Diagramming. She thought the introduction was going to be the same as it was for culture. She thought the introduction to Using Diagrams was "cool." She liked how the Asian guy drew on a piece of glass to show you what he was drawing. She giggled at the dialogue during the napkin example, and then continued to the Symbols segment. The matching exercises was difficult for her—she didn’t know how to play the game and was confused as to whether she had gotten it right or not. She asked "How do you go back?" She did a lot of the exercises, though, ultimately generating a score of 21 hits and 34 misses. In the collaborative exercise, she wanted to know if there was a mechanism in place for erasing. There wasn’t. She ended up doing the collaborative portion with the tester. "What’s the point?" she asked. "To show whether or not I’m a good artist?" She skipped several of the scenarios because they were too difficult to draw.

Next she visited the Seeing section. She did quite a few of the Hidden Pictures. She found it was easier with a grid and clicked everywhere. She found the black and white ones to be much harder. Finishing the Hidden Pictures, she went on to the Eye Tracking segment. She expressed concern that she did not know how to see the answer once she got it wrong, but nevertheless did several of the exercises.