Design 2

Max arrives at the YourTurn login page after a Google search informs him that the site is a great way to donate toys to other families. Since it's his first time visiting the site, he proceeds to set up an account.


Upon finishing registration, Max is directed to the YourTurn homepage. He looks over the three options....

Give describes offers toys for free to other families. That sounds just like what he wants, but he reads the others just to make sure. Receive tells Max that he can search for used toys donated by other users. He wants to be rid of toys, not receive more, so this isn't right.  Exchange states that he can offer his toys up for bartering with others. While this could rid him of the Barbies and comics, he didn't really need other toys. 

Max decides that Give is exactly suits his needs.


Max then arrives on the Give page. He sees an empty inventory under a button "Upload Photos" and a bunch of empty slots with category names on the right side of the page. Max realizes that he has to take pictures of the Barbies and comic books, so he steps away from his computer to snap a few photos. 

Max returns and uploads the photos onto the site. All of his pictures now populate the inventory at the bottom, which now has a icon telling him to drag the toys into categories. Max drags all of the Barbies into the "Dolls" slots and the comics into "Books". Once the toys are all sorted he clicks "submit".

YourTurn gives Max a thank you alert for offering up toys for donation and notifies him that he will receive a message once someone puts a claim on his offers.


Kyle finds out about YourTurn similarly to Max. After registration, Kyle chooses the Receive option, as he does not have much to offer in way of exchange and would like to find something nice for his kids. He lands on a page titled "Free Toys" and sees many categories full of donations offered by others. 

After scrolling through a few categories Kyle sees the set of comics that were being offered by Max. His kids absolutely love Japanese culture, so he immediately adds them to his cart and checks out. 

Kyle is prompted to send a message to Max so they can arrange the toy transfer. Soon after, Max was rid of a bit of clutter in his home and Kyle's kids had a wonderful surprise waiting for them when they got home from school. 

Analysis

Learnability

Pros
This design is minimalistic in terms of features. Thus navigation across the site's pages and use of available features is straightforward. The cart metaphor is a familiar concept used on many other sites. Although the cart is displayed differently, familiarity with the representation should makes its purpose intuitive.

Cons

While the cart is a familiar metaphor, this site uses a drag and drop interface rather than an "add to cart" button as many other sites do. This may cause brief misunderstanding for first time site users. 

Efficiency

Pros

The defining feature of this UI is efficiency via minimalism. Except for sending a message to another user, visitors to the site never need to use the keyboard. All actions are either clicking a button or dragging an image icon. This is beneficial because mouse actions are very fast in comparison to keyboard input. 

Cons

Although it is quick and easy for receivers to add toys to their cart and checkout, if the user wants to find something specific then the efficiency of this design decreases severely. The only filtering / search assist provided for receivers is the categorization buckets. No search by name makes it hard to find exactly what they're looking for. As an example, the user may have visited the site once and found an item that they wanted but weren't committed to getting at that time. If the user visits the site again later, then they would have to scroll though possibly all the items in the category the item was under in order to find it again. 

Safety

Pros

This drag and drop functionality makes accidental placement of donations in the wrong category or items in the cart easily undoable by simply dragging the item back out. 

Cons

If the user accidentally removes an item from their cart, then they could potentially have to search through the entire list of items in a category again in order to find the item to place it back in their cart. 

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