Since the cognitive walkthrough post on Harold Carter is quite long, i thought i would make a second post to summarize the points, and comment on them. This way, both the cognitive walkthrough, which keeps the detail on the evaluation, and the summary of points, which will aid members of the team on the redesign, will be present on the blog.
HARDWARE
1) Refine the way in which the device is held, which is one of the major issues with the device at the moment. One suggestion, I came up with is having some kind of bar underneath the device for the user to grip onto, that could have finger marks to press fingers into. Its quite hard to explain it here but I'll explain better in person to the person doing the hardware redesign. Any other sensible grips would be suitable too, where the users fingers and thumbs do not touch the screen. Possibly increase the size of the control panel too!
2) Adding a Nintendo Wii like strap to the device could also be useful, and help the user feel more safe and less afraid of dropping it. This is only necessary if a decent grip is not manufactured.
3) Screen size and text size is great - keep it the same!
4) Button design is good too, and buttons are placed right, but add in text underneath the buttons to say what they do! Take out the middle button since its quite confusing to distinguish the difference between this and the select button. Move the arrow buttons further apart! Whats the difference between the red and the green buttons? No need to have different colours here, only on the undo/select buttons.
4) Round off the top corners like the bottom ones. They make the look and feel of the device better!
5) Make sure that the infra-red scanner location is obvious to the use, either by text or a sticking out bit.
SOFTWARE
1) Maybe show a warning screen on startup to indicate what beeping or vibrating does, to save the user working it out or reading the manual.
2) Add on more box messages to let the user what is going on constantly. If the user presses scan and nothing happens, pop up a screen saying 'Try Again' or something. After the item is added, pop up a screen saying 'Item Added'.
3) Simplify the way in which users add food which doesn't have a barcode. Remove the screen about nutrition groups here, its quite confusing. Although liked the little box which showed the user how far along the process they were at.
4) The recommendations menu was great, and showed the user what he should be eating. The way in which they could select things and displays was of a decent standard.
