Scenario
Alisha’s best friend is having a 21st birthday bash at a nearby fancy dance-club-slash-bar this Saturday, and Alisha is obviously invited. She wants to look her best for the occasion, both for her friend and for any cute guys she might find hanging out at the bar, but she also wants to have fun and just dance, because her last week at MIT was incredibly stressful. Because the bar is somewhat fancy, she’d like to find a somewhat “classy” little black dress that she can dance in, but all of her old dresses are either too flashy or too hard to move in.
However, one of her friends recently told her about the Infinite Closet, a site that allows users to exchange their older dresses for different ones, using “points” gained by sending clothes to the site. Since Alicia’s interested in getting rid of some of her older party dresses while she’s at it, she takes some pictures of some of her old dresses, makes an account on the site with her credit card, and uploads her dress pictures for points. She then packages her old dresses and ships them to the site’s provided address, as the site has promised to assign her more points once it actually receives the dresses she sends.
But now that Alicia has some points gained by uploading her old dresses, she starts browsing through the dresses listed on the site. She selects first the dress color, then sorts by size, style, and other categories, and eventually finds the little black dress she wants. She uses her points to purchase the dress, which the site ships to her in a few days, and she wears that dress to the party and has a blast.
Note for the scenario described:
We came to an impasse while trying to figure out whether dresses would be sold between-users using a points system, or between the user and the site (also using a points system). The current scenario assumes the interaction is between user and site; the user can “upload” pictures of clothing they want to sell to the site to immediately receive points, but they are then responsible for actually shipping the clothes in question to the site, and they’ll get more points once the clothes are actually received. Abuses are discouraged by the user needing to provide their credit card information to actually create an account on the site.
Designs
Our three designs are listed below. The actual design (sketches + storyboard) is attached as a linked .PDF file, but its analysis is listed below.
Design 1: Clothing Racks Abstraction
Learnability:
This design aims to be consistent in look and feel across several different screens, as seen by the constantly-available side bar and the fact that most elements are not repositioned. (The “Register” screen is currently not similar to the rest of the site; this could be changed in the next iteration.) The title of each page is usually clearly visible, reminding the user of what page they're on, and it is fairly simple to navigate the application using the sidebar. Popups, which disable access to the rest of the site until they are dealt with, are clearly outlined and indicated as such, so as to not be confusing.
Furthermore, the use of clothing racks as an abstraction is intended to assist the user in visualizing the sort of dress she wants, as opposed to scrolling through lists of textual styles or colors which don't convey the "essence" of a dress very well, and take time to memorize.
Efficiency:
This design intends to make navigation simple by maintaining a menu bar on the side with the most important elements of the site (buying, selling, and saving). Also, selecting categories of dresses to look at takes only a few clicks, and experienced users will be used to the position of dress "racks." However, efficiency could be improved by adding some way of saving a user's past searches, as currently, a search for "black, knee-high dresses" will be lost if the user navigates away from the "Buy" option. Perhaps the user's latest search can be stored to be immediately visible.
Popups that appear whenever the user is about to do something important may limit efficiency, but they can be disabled. However, there is probably a better way to make sure the user thinks about her choice.
Safety:
Navigating the site is fairly simple and there is not much to "get wrong" - the one issue, mentioned above in Efficiency, is that if a user clicks a different menu item while currently browsing in "The Bazaar", her current search will be lost, and it takes a few clicks to return to the clothes she was viewing earlier.
The major safety concern is accidentally buying or selling a dress the user did not intend to. This design hopes that by making most information on the "Sell Dress" page mandatory to fill out, the user will have thought meaningfully about the dress she intends to sell before she clicks "Sell". The other issue is editing the information of a dress the user has submitted for selling, if the user made a mistake while filling out the forms; we can add an edit/history tab to the "Sell" window to allow the user to revise past submissions, if necessary. This is also the case for buying dresses; up until the dress is shipped, if the user decides she doesn't actually want the dress she "purchased", she should be allowed to retract her order.
Design 2: Online Shopping
Analysis of this design is included at the end of the above .PDF.
Design 3: Box
Analysis of this design is included after each sketch in the above .PDF.
1 Comment
Sacha Zyto
"Overall: Very good analysis and presentation.
Maybe explain a bit more the concept of using points: how does it help in your particular context (dresses vs stg else). More generally, are there things that you think could be typical of a dress exchange site from a typical onine shopping site such as ebay. Random suggestion: add a social dimension (maybe Alicia and another user, Claudia like each other taste a lot so show their dresses in priority etc... ).
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