11 November 2002 Several 5th form students were brought into lab C11 to test the TEP02 EngineeringDrawing CD. One had no previous computer experience.

Findings:

• Flash's file/etc menu confused some students, who kept trying to use that to navigate the piece. They were driven to that before the buttons. This makes sense as the menu is something they've seen before.
  • solution: lose the file menu if possible
  • Full screen to remove other distractions
  • perhaps make buttons more PC-like (UGH!!!)
  • Maybe OS-checking to mimick the proper OS (MAC/PC/XP/98)
• Tried to use the tools to actually draw the constructions on the computer, not clear that this was just a step by step tutorial/animation of how to.
  • solution: opening instruction page
• Audio: people without audio were confused at the liong gaps before animation. Some never even waited for the animation, thinking that the tutorial consisted only of static images
  • solution: Audio defaults off
  • or else checks to see if they have audio and adjusts accordingly, though this would be very iffy, as we cannot tell if the speaker is on or not
• Right Click: many were distracted by the right click, ending up zooming way into the piece where it was impossible to use. It seemed some people were so new to computers that they did not know the difference between right and left click, so every attempt at click resulted in that menu!
  • solution: disable right-click
• Instructions: did not know how to open (also those descriptions next to the title in XP confused some students)
  • solution: instead of assuming knowledge, point out "double-click the icon to open..."
• Instructions: Did not know the difference between Mac/ PC and XP/98, so just read the instructions from the top. Fortunately, the XP instructions work for 98. Tests on Mac might cause problems, as opening the PC version would nto work.
  • solution: ??? I have no idea. An autoplay we could depend on for all platforms would be great, but this requires additional software.