TestTube - Making Research Accessible
TestTube
Webpage showing interesting Government funded projects in an engaging grid view.
TestTube Project Page
Videos of researchers explaining their project by answering pre-defined questions
Rapid Prototyping
Paper prototype to validate interface concepts by conducting usability study.
Paper Prototyping
Usability testing using a quick-and-dirty prototype with fluid sections.
Usability Testing
Users interacting with paper prototype providing invaluable feedback.
Speed Dating
One of the six storyboards to be presented for speed dating exercise explaining TestTube's concept.
Website that allows researchers to make their research more accessible to the common taxpayer
During the research, we identified that the Government invests a large sum of taxpayer’s money in academic research. These research get published in research papers and journals but generally the common taxpayers are left unaware about these interesting projects that they help funding.
Concept
TestTube is an attempt to provide researchers a platform to share their research in an engaging and accessible manner. The interface allows researcher to create video respond to standard interview questions explaining their research. TestTube also allows researchers to share their project images and videos that can make their work look appealing and share it with a larger audience. As videos have high potential of viral growth, TestTube provides an engaging medium of sharing research work as compared to traditional mediums of research papers and journals.
Project Context
- Feb 2012 to May 2012
- Semester Project, Understanding the Creative Process
- Carnegie Mellon University
Techniques
- Needfinding
- Social Media Analysis
- Semi-Structured Interview
- Affinity Diagramming
- Crowdsourcing
- Brainstorming
- Visioning
- Storyboarding
- Speed Dating
- Crowdfunding
- Video Production
- Rapid Prototyping
- Web Development
- A-B Testing
- Usability Evaluation
Team
- Abhinav Gupta, Student
- Julia Teitelbaum, Student
- Anuj Kumar, Student
- Prof. Steven Dow, Guide
Design Process
TestTube
Needfinding: In order to understand the need of users we conducted Social Media Analysis collecting information from over 100 relevant comments on Twitter, Facebook and Blogs, Government websites like usasepnding.gov, data.gov and foundations that promote Government openness like Sunlight and Public Square Project. In addition to understand specific user needs, we conducted three interviews with people representing different stakeholders in the project.
Affinity Diagram: Based on the needs, we created Six opportunity statements and brainstormed over 100 ideas. We also collected 90 more related ideas from Crowdsourcing using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The ideas were categorized based on the emerging patterns using Affinity Diagram. Then the ideas were plotted on Impact Vs Achievability graph to find the top 15 ideas with the highest potential.
Storyboarding and Speed Dating: The top 15 ideas were narrowed down to 6 on the basis of expert critique reviews and voting. The final 6 ideas were evaluated by speed dating by creating storyboards each of which were shown to 4 user on Mindswarms and 2 in a face-to-face interview.
Crowdfunding Campaign: After synthesizing all the data, TestTube emerged as the favorite and the most impactful idea. As a part of course, we created a Indiegogo Crowdfunding campaign allowing people to invest in our idea, which ran for almost 1 month. Although, we did not met the target amount we set to create the system, the experience of running a crowdfunding campaign was very interesting which included creating campaign video and perks for the funders. Visit indiegogo campaign
Prototype and Evaluation: Several prototype of the interface were created and iterated based on data collected during user testing. Paper prototype of the interfaces for the researcher and the common man were created and tested with real users.
Final Prototype and A-B Test: The final prototype was developed using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The prototype displayed several HCI projects and was designed to give an overview of the real system. An A-B test was conducted with 20 users on variation of homepage design to select projects.
