Concept Validation

We narrowed down our list of 50 concepts to focus in on 10 to show to possible users:

• Highlighting/notes
  
• Stop and destination alert
  
• "Forget-me-not"
  
• Catch-up screen
  
• One hand control
  
• Newspaper format
  
• Ambient/dramatic lighting
  
• E-mail synching
  
• Share library
  
• Frisbee page flip
  

We drew storyboards for each of these ideas, which you can see here:

We showed these to possible users in order to get feedback. Below are
some quotes from the people we talked to:

• "I like it. Highlighting would be really helpful."
  
• "Dramatic lighting would be annoying."
  
• "I like online layouts better than traditional newspapers."
  
• "It should definitely have one handed control, but the train shakes too much for the frisbee page flip."
  

Overall, we had mixed opinions about our ideas. Some of them turned out to be too
situational. For instance, not everybody we talked to had a Blackberry, so the e-mail
alert system didn't get such a positive response. People who ride the subway also were
not too impressed by the stop and destination alerts, because on subways it's generally
easy to know when your stop is coming up, unlike sometimes with buses. The dramatic
ambient lighting, one idea that we really thought would be great beforehand, was universally
shot down. We discovered that people don't particularly want/need any other sort of visual
cue when they are reading something, because all of the action is going on in their mind.