...
Erin goes back to the Kitchen Contents page and sees that she still has asparagus from last week. She checks the box near asparagus, as well as the frozen greens she has in her fridge. Then she click the recipes button and is taken to an external recipe site with a query using those items in a new tab.
Evaluation:
This design values efficiency over learnability. There are no splash screens explaining procedures. Each entry box has a label near it, however, as well as having the mode displayed on the menu bar by means of highlighting the name current page. The nested menu idea (with the clickable triangles) used for displaying food is similar to file systems in operating systems like Mac OS X aiding learnability. I expect the most complicated part to learn would be searching for recipes. , as there is no dedicated search page. The status bar at the top will initially include a message about selecting the check boxes near food and then hitting the recipe button, but there is no guarantee that users would read that. Efficiency is hindered slightly by the fact the users must separately enter items and price. Users also must specify a location for food items, and add items in different locations in different views. For users who don’t organize food by location in their head (aka, want to add milk, then cereal, then ice cream, each in different locations), this system would not be efficient. This tradeoff is made to prevent users from having to type/select the location for each food item, would would also not be efficient. In looking for items, users can either scroll through the entire list, or use the search at the top of the page, speeding up the process.
Users are prone to make errors when they type, and there is a lot of text entry in this design. Suggestions for items names help prevent these errors, but they will still happen. The status message includes a link that will allow you to undo the last action (such as add food) so that users can undo a change if they notice quickly. Otherwise, if a user added the wrong food, (and it was more than one click on the sight ago) they just have to delete all the foods they added and re-add the correct items. The time to do this would be improved by searching for the item, but it’s still not fast. The same holds for adding purchases to the budget page.
Design 2:
Upon loading the website, Erin sees the Dough home page. It is easy for her to find the login button at the top, and she enters her username and password in the modal dialog box that appears when she clicks it.
...