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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:
Learnability and Efficiency:
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.
Visibility:
Users are prone to make errors when they type, and there is a lot of text entry in this design. 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.
Error Prevention/Correction:
The page the user is on is visible (via highlighting) on the left on the menu bar. Unfortunately, this may not always be visible, however, i the user has a lot of items listed and scrolls down to look at the bottom of the list. The links on the menu also have a good information scent by listing the actions that can be taken after clicking on that link. Then menu bar will be colored differently than the rest of the page, but an additional afforance, such as a clickable texture, would also be useful.
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