Fluid Earth Viewer
Overview
Fluid Earth Viewer (FEVer)-- a data visualization web application--will allow users to visualize current and past conditions of our planet’s atmosphere and oceans. In particular, it provides hands-on visualization of the important climate role of the polar regions, their connections to lower latitudes, and the changes they are undergoing. FEVer is explorable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using your computer, tablet, and smartphone.
Sponsor
National Science Foundation
Duration:
August 2017 - May 2019 (21 weeks)
My Role
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Usability testing, User needs research.
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Lead 4 undergraduate research assistants, provide guidance and coordination.
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Took notes and supplemented questions during the tests, performed preliminary analysis and reports.
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Conducted semi-structured interviews, think-aloud tasks, and observational studies
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Conduct qualitative coding based on participants' responses
Participant Recruiting
In total, we recruited more than 300 participants in the lab and in the local museum and elementary school. These participants include college students, teenagers, and children.
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10 participants: interview and exploratory stage
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20 participants: paper prototype and focus group interview stage
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230 college students and during the 1st and 2nd round of usability testing stage
THE PROBLEM
Understanding environmental knowledge is hard. It is abstract to visualize Earth's atmosphere and oceans comprehensively. Here are some struggles one user had:
"I can only see what's going on from the Earth right now. However, there is no way to let me know what was going on in the past."
" I would like to learn more about extreme weather conditions and view a blueprint of the Earth conditions "
"I would like to compare weather conditions at different locations"
"I would like to learn more about the weather conditions including temperature, precipitation, pollution etc. Weather forecast is the only way to learn about the weather "
Observation, Interview, Research through design
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
After interviews and market research on our current environmental website, here are some findings:
Key Finding: People are willing to learn more about the environmental conditions of the Earth. However, there are very few applications on the market showing the environmental conditions of the Earth right now.
Key Finding: People are willing to see a holistic picture of the Earth. However, they need to have a legend to understand the environmental conditions of the Earth better.
After the primary and secondary research based on the last version of the website, here are some findings from the users. Based on these results, computer scientists developed another version of the website:
Main Page
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There are 9 menus displaying different functions of the website.
The menu from left to right are following: "View data information", "Select variable", "Pick data/time", "Change map projection", ""Center view on your lolocation", "Add location marker", "Reset View", "Tips", "More options".
This is an innovative website and mobile application revised for educational and professional usages. See current wind, weather, ocean and pollution conditions as forecasted by supercomputers, on an interactive animated map.
Updated every three hours.
By clicking different spots on the earth, users can obtain specific data about the real-time total cloud water data.
Different condition such as "Air Temperature, See level Pressure, Clouds, Total air moisture and Chemical condition (including carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide).
Watch a screen video about how it works:
After the second version, our group continued the usability testings in the lab and the local COSI Museum. I coded participants' performances to detect their true needs and understand whether there is a difference between what they say and what they think. By coding the videos, I found a lot of system errors and human errors, which led to the next iteration.
Usability Testing with Laptop
Usability Testing with Tablet
Screenshots of Qualitative video coding notes
Based on above findings, we revised our website below.
REFLECTIONS
Always document everything, even when you're told not to
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I know this sounds really basic. Thorough documentation is excellent for many things: backing up research findings when they are challenged; helping the team recall details on design rationale; quickly putting together a final report (or a portfolio piece).
I made the mistake of not documenting as much as I can in this project. We said we were not going to write a final report, doing things differently and quickly. Guess what, managers asked for a final report at the end of the project and I struggled with it. I still had discussion guides, notes, toplines, and some photos, but I wish I had findings to back up every design decision we made, even when it seemed obvious at the time; I wish I had the exact version of the prototype that I tested; I wish I took photo of every exercise we did with the participants.
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Considering the accessibility of the application is important
When I was conducting the usability testing in the lab, some participants always provided confusing answers about the color identification. For example, one participant mentioned that the hotter area on the earth had a greater degree of purple. However, that area was actually red. This made me realize how difficult it is for a colorblind user to use our website since we use color to differentiate different variables. In this case, adding different patterns and shapes to highlight the contrast is crucial for users. Based on this finding, our website adjusted the color distribution of the legend. We tried to make sure that confusing colors (red & purple) were not labeled next to each other.
More works
