Questions

• Typical day walkthrough: What kind of personal and public devices do you encounter in a typical day?

  • If needed prompt with examples: phone, tv, microwave (?) etc.

  • What do you do on these devices?

  • How long do you spend on these devices?

• Set-up: Did you or someone else set up the personal devices before using them? How about the public devices?

  • What was that process like?

• OS and application settings: Do you have any system or application settings on your personal devices? What are the settings?

  • If needed prompt with examples: screen reader settings, text settings, volume settings, contrast settings

• Web settings: Do you modify settings on web services - such as mail, social networks, etc. - to make them easier to use?

• What, when, why,  where: How often do you change settings on your devices?

  • What settings do you need to change most frequently?

    • If needed prompt with examples: video volume, zoom level

  • What circumstances prompted you to modify those settings?

  • Where do you go to modify those settings?

    • If needed prompt with examples: hardware buttons, application settings, toolbars, shortcuts, etc.

• Experience reflection: How comfortable do you find modifying settings in [ tools user mentioned in above ]?

  • What makes the experience [ comfortable/uncomfortable ]?

• Future: Have you come across any devices that you wish to use but can’t?

  • What prevents you from using those devices?

  • Is there any settings you think would benefit you, but are unavailable?

General

• WHAT (else) to test?

• HOW to best structure the testing to answer these questions?

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• when presented with items we define as preferences how do users  categorize them?
  • include items we don’t define as a preference? e.g. hardware options, ‘no ads’, etc.
• do users distinguish between an ‘ephemeral/temporary preference’ vs a ‘ permanent preference’?  (this relates to saving - when and how)

Features

search bar ease of use

• with label ‘search all preferences’
• with label and good example (e.g. eyes tired)
• with label, good example, and recommendations

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• auto-save
• auto-save with option to apply last auto-saved set on new device
• explicit save

Tools

* any device a user encounters responds to their preferences

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preferences automatically transfer between tools? (e.g. what happens when user is making adjustments in both spaces?  how are they prioritized? how will common terms vs non-common terms be handled?)

Preferences

a user's preferences represent all transformations or enhancements possible on a device

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• keeping the tool as simple as possible
• avoid creating barriers to access by limiting availability
• realistic use cases

Sets

* a user has different preferences set depending on the context and the device responds accordingly

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i.e. does user have to be in a given context to make preference adjustments for that context?

Saving

any modified setting is a preference (autosave always across all devices)

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