Whew. That got a little heated. In a good way, though.
Ackley told us some stuff we really need to hear about that state of our application. Things that are much harder to see from the 'inside' as the development team. Things like user experience and what a new user sees when they first come to our little world. It was tempting to get defensive about some of the criticisms, but I think they mostly had merit. I'm actually glad we can get honest feedback like that. Per today, we are going to change the look-and-feel of the page; it currently has a kind of soft, open-road type of theme, which we will change to a more "mechanics and garage" type style (this is, after all, a mechanic's tool, no?).
There are also some usability features we desperately need. One that came up today is the ability to backtrack manually in the graph search (i.e. cancel a selection and go back to a previous one). To me, this feature is totally critical - users need to be able to have more control over where they are going. We could also use more info at each state about why that state was selected - e.g. "Since you said the plugs are not sparking, we are going to check...". Something as simple as that additional content would greatly help our user experience.
And then there's that search box. A thorn in my side from day one. We (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to add a search box for users to enter stuff into to try and parse out the issue they wish to diagnose with their car. While it could be a good feature, it currently is unbalanced on it's return on investment (ROI) in my mind. The drop-down boxes are a good interface, one that the user should understand, and one they have to use if they, for instance, want to buy auto parts online anyway. So, I think for now we are going to scrap the search box. Ackley is correct that, at present, it's more of a 'trap' or confusion to users than a help.
Overall, it was a good meeting and I think we got some good feedback as well as bad.
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