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Digital Painting App: Usability Research, Quick Reference Card

Deliverable

  • Usability reports (proprietary to Microsoft)

  • Quick reference card for a then-innovative digital painting application

Primary skills

  • Usability research

  • Rapid prototyping with a graphic designer

  • Knowledge of localization requirements

Primary tools

  • Adobe Illustrator

Timeframe

2011

One of my positions at Microsoft was to run content publishing in a small, innovation lab called the Unlimited Potential Group (UPG). UPG exclusively focused on highly speculative "version 1" products, often economically positioned for emerging markets. Most efforts did not make it to initial release. Of those that did, if the project showed promise, it would more often then not be handed off to a larger division at Microsoft for longer-term development. 

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One of the most creative projects to come out of UPG was later branded as "Fresh Paint," a digital painting app now included with Windows. But the origin of Fresh Paint was an extended development program code-named Microsoft Digital Art. The "magic" of Digital Art was that when it was paired with a specific type of display that included sensors all along the bezel, it could track pitch, yaw, roll, and pressure of any object on the screen--including a finger, or an actual paint brush. The program then modeled in extremely high fidelity the behavior of paint on canvas--delightful!

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Usability research: I participated in lab and field usability research for Digital Art. This included running longitudinal tests with professional visual artists and art teachers, and an exclusive installation of several digital painting devices in a children's play space at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York City. The resulting usability findings are proprietary to Microsoft.

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Quick-reference card: The MoMA staff requested an easy-to handle quick reference job aid. I partnered with a graphic designer to create the basic UI guide shown below. It was produced on  laminated heavy card stock in standard letter-sized landscape orientation. 

 

We designed the card for cost-effective localization into several languages. All purely visual elements were restricted to the base layer in Illustrator. Then, the content in each language was placed on separate layers. To produce a given language's quick reference card, we'd show the base layer and that language's layer, and hide the other layers.

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Business result: Feedback from usability participants and MoMA staff and visitors was highly positive. The quick-reference card helped people find and play with the awesome paint simulation capabilities of the Digital Art product.

digital-art-qr-card.png
digital-art-field-tests2.png

Photo captions:
(1) Digital Art quick reference cards and the Digital Art PCs installed at MoMA, New York. In the photo on the left, you can see how the multiple language versions were held together by a single ring, and hung on a wall. In actual usage, they were delightfully scattered all over this child-friendly room.


(2) A stunning result produced by a visual artist who participated in usability tests of Digital Art, utilizing specialized display hardware for high-fidelity input with fingers or actual paint brushes.  

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