Farmers' Exchange

Interactive Prototype #2
Team:

Matt Gedigian, Jessica Santana, Joyce Tsai

Project:

Farmers' Exchange

Sessions:

4/7 11:00-12:00
• The Berkeley team went over changes to the "ask a
question" phone tree per feedback from the first round of
user testing, Neil's input, and the heuristic evaluation.
4/9 2:00-3:30
• The Berkeley team discussed implementation of the
"browse" function for the phone tree.
4/12 7:00-9:45
• The Berkeley team further discussed implementation and
brainstormed experiment design.
4/13 3:00-3:30
• Matt, Joyce, and Neil discussed the experiment design and
the interactive prototype over the phone.

Contributions:

All: Brainstormed outline of the "browse" phone tree. Determined

what to change in the "ask a question" phone tree.

Matt: Voxeo, VXML

Jessica: Testing and refining interface.
Joyce: Diagramming specific flow of interface. Testing and
refining interface.
Changes Made

The group that evaluated our project did not provide severity and
fixability ratings, but they highlighted three major issues.

Logged heuristic:

Heuristic Location Description Severity Fixability Sum Fix

Have to remember to press
# after recording a question,
or else system will replay
When prompt and when # is Have system recognize when
recording pressed after the replay the user has been speaking but
Error new system assumes no question might have forgotten to press
prevention question was recorded. 3 2 5 #

Original quote:
The most important issue we identified causes the system to lose a
message that the farmer has been actively recording. Before leaving a
message, the system informs the farmer that he or she must press the
pound key to complete their message. In the event that the farmer
then records their message and forgets to press the pound key, the
system will replay the reminder to press the pound key after leaving
their message after a certain amount of time passes. The farmer then
would probably press the pound key expecting the message they just
left to be saved.

Unbeknownst to the farmer, when the system replays the message, it

also resets anything that has been recorded and starts recording a
new message. So when the farmer presses the pound key just after
hearing the reminder, the system will store a blank message.

This is an important issue to fix in order to prevent errors on the part

of the user. Sufficient technology exists to perhaps have the system
recognize when the user has been silent for some time and make the
prompt a real prompt rather than a reset indicator.

The first issue is the system losing a message the user has been
recording. In our first interactive prototype, if the user did not
provide a valid response or if the user simply provided no
response, the system would automatically repeat the prompt
without saving any data. When the user recorded a question, the
system prompted them to press the pound key at the end. If the
user did not press the pound key, the system would
automatically repeat the prompt without saving the user's
question. Then, the user either pressed the pound key without
leaving any question, or the user had to repeat the entire
question.

We changed the system so that if the user forgot to press the

pound key, the system would simply wait for a pause of a certain
length, and then repeat the question back for confirmation. This
way, the user would not have to go through extra effort if they
forgot to press the pound key. Since nearly all our users did not
press the pound key during testing, this is a more optimal
solution that lessens user error and does not prompt the user for
more information.

Logged heuristics:

Heuristic Location Description Severity Fixability Sum Fix

When User caller ID to repeat

first Called into system and number and give user a
Error calling had to key in phone yes/no option to accept as
Prevention system number number 3 2 5 their number.

Minor issue, but system could

When New user calling system user caller ID to indicate user
first for the first time, or after is using system for the first
Help and calling some time and needing time and walk them through
Documentation system more information 4 2 6 more of an explanation

User caller ID to repeat

Called into system and number and give user a
Error had to key in phone yes/no option to accept as
Prevention number number 3 1 4 their number.

Original quote:
In addition, other prompts for information could be simplified by using
Caller ID to allow the user to authenticate from the number they are
calling from. In the case of initial mailbox setup, if most users will
probably be using the phone they use for setup for receiving
notifications, adding caller ID to detect the phone number the user is
calling from would greatly simplify the setup process.

The second issue identified in the heuristic evaluation was that

the system could not recognize a user's phone number. In
addition, comments from the project lead in Stanford (Neil)
emphasized designing for the majority of scenarios, as opposed
to edge cases, such as one person using several phone numbers,
or several people using a single phone number. Because of this,
we decided that assuming a one-to-one person-to-phone
relationship was reasonable. As such, the second interactive
prototype stores the user's phone number in the database when
the user asks a question. The phone number is automatically tied
to a voicemail box, allowing the user to call back from the same
phone and retrieve any messages without having to log in or
confirm their phone number. This may need to be changed once
the system is more robust and has more users.

Logged heuristic:

Heuristic Location Description Severity Fixability Sum Fix

Perhaps have the answer
Have to call the system back play when the system calls
While after it calls to notify you and store it in the mailbox for
Flexibility notifying about a new answer; seems later, or explore the ability to
and user of awkward to have to prompt the user to play the
efficiency answered remember number for message during the
of use question mailbox 2 1 3 notification call

Original quote:
Also, the notification of a message requires them to hang up and then
call back instead of just giving the user the option to hear the message
immediately. It would be reasonable to have the system play the new
answer when it makes the notification call to the farmer; those users
who would be frustrated by having to call back would remain happy
and those who didn't have time to listen to the message could call
back to the system any time.

The third issue identified in the heuristic evaluation was

associated with how the user accessed the answer to their
question. In the first prototype, the system would call the user
when their question had been answered. The user would then
have to hang up and call the system back to retrieve her
message. This was also identified as an issue in our user testing.
A future prototype will change the system so that the user can
press a key when they receive a call from the system and directly
access their answer. However, if the user does not wish to hear
their answer at that moment, they also have the option of calling
the system back and retrieving the answer from their
voicemail. This feature will not be implemented in the current
prototype, although it is planned for future prototypes.

Further changes we made include adding the "browse" section,

streamlining the voicemail system, and taking out the global help
system. The browse system will be the most unfamiliar part of
the system to most users, as it differs most from a normal phone
tree. As such, we will have two separate versions for testing.
However, only one version will be complete for this assignment.
The version for this assignment searches for questions and
answers based on audio tags. The user can say several single-
word tags, such as "organic," "heirloom," and "tomatoes," and
the system will "AND" the tags and use it to find related
questions and answers. The user can then listen to the first five
seconds of each question, along with the associated audio tags.
If the user decides that the question is helpful, they can "click"
on the question by pressing a key and listen to the entire
question and answer. The second browse system, to be
developed later for the experiment, will be a hierarchical
browsing system, in which the user will listen to a tree of tags. If
a tag seems helpful, the user can press a key and browse down a
level until they reach questions and answers.

We also streamlined the voicemail system, taking out options for

archiving and deleting. Although more robust voicemail functions
will be useful in the final product, we decided not to code them
into the interactive prototype because of the time involved.
Similarly, we removed the global help system, as the system is
not yet final enough to determine what exactly the users will
need help with.

Tools Used

The system is implemented in VoiceXML 2.1 and is hosted by

Voxeo (http://voxeo.com). The final version of our system will be
largely database-driven. We were faced with a decision as to how
much of that engineering work to incorporate into this second
Interactive Prototype. Some of the prototype's functionality can
be achieved perfectly well by hard-coding values. For interactions
in which the caller is only accessing existing information, it is
possible to bake in sample data by hand writing VoiceXML
files. We implemented database driven behavior only when
necessary to create the interactions we needed to test with
users.
We implemented the backend of the system in PHP. This server-
side application accesses a SQL database to dynamically
generate VXML. Although not all pieces of the front-end interface
are driven by the database, we did design a complete database
schema in order to make progress towards our overall goal.

We adopted a partial implementation from Stanford folks who

used MySQL. For convenience during testing we have
transitioned to SQLite3. This is a file-based database which
doesn't require a server. SQLite3 supports a subset of SQL that is
adequate for our purposes. We intend to transition back to
MySQL for production use.

Instructions for Prototype

The prototype hosted by Voxeo and can be reached by regular

phone (or Skype or SIP).

Number Number
Type
Direct Local # (650) 273-5551
Skype VoIP +99000936 9991428574
SIP VoIP sip:9991428574@sip.voxeo.net

1. The system's behavior depends on whether the caller has

previously left a message.
2. If so, they are prompted to check their voice mail. The
voice mail menu allows them to listen to their questions and
answers.
3. All users are given the option to ask new questions and to
search or browse for existing questions and answers.
4. Asking a question allows the user to record a spoken
question.
5. Search allows the user to speak a keyword to obtain a list
of matching questions.
6. Browse presents a fixed list of topics and allows the user to
select among them using their keypad.