...

Design #2 : Lunch List Browsing Interface

1) This window is the home page of the site. It shows the list of lunches the user has been invited to in chronological order by time of event.  Each lunch event shows the most important details, namely time, place, and creator of event.  They are clickable to show another page with extra details such as administrator comments, and the list of individuals who are attending.  A tooltip will also be shown upon a mouseover which will show an abbreviated list of people attending.  If user desires an event that does not exist in a list, they can create their own using the “Create Lunch Event” button at the bottom.

This is the button Anjali would use, because she desires to create a TacoTime lunch.  

2) The “Create New Lunch” window polls the user for location, time, people to invite, when to send a reminder email to participants (if a reminder is desired) and when to allow users to confirm attendance.  The “where” field is simply a text box.  The time is segmented into separate boxes for hour and minute, a short drop down allows selection between AM/PM, and a calendar widget for selection of date.  The “people to invite” field is a scrollable list of users or groups of users, with checkboxes to indicate whether the person should be invited.  This list also has an optional search field at the top. It will abbreviate the list below to only include users who match the string typed into this field.  The creator of an event can also set reminder times, and the time in which parcipants can confirm their attendance. These two have identical fields with a spot for a 2 digit number, followed by a “minutes, hours, days” dropdown that indicates time before event reminders, and confirmations will be in effect, respectively.  There is also a comments section at the bottom where the user can put in whatever they think will be helpful for other users to see in order to coordinate the event.  They complete creation of the event by pressing the “Create Event” button at the bottom.  If the event has already been created, they will see an “Edit Event” button there instead.

3) The “MyLunches” screen shows a user all tof the lunches they have joined.  It shows the same information for each lunch as does the browsing home page.  Clicking an event yields the same result of showing the full event details.  On the left, there is a space which will be inhabited by an exclamation point if the event is within the confirmation time set by the user.  Upon clicking an event with the exclamation point, they will be able to confirm attendance to the event.  This has the effect of giving a very accurate tally at the last minute before an event of who is actually going to attend.

If this screen is reached by creating or joining an event, text at the top indicating that the event has been successfully added will be displayed.

4) The Event Info page is reached by clicking on an event either in the list on the home page or by clicking on an event in the MyLunches list.  This screen shows the location and time of the event, as well as a list of people that have joined the event.  A “U” will be displayed at the right side of a person’s name to indicate they have not confirmed attendance, and a “C” will be displayed to indicate if they have.  Any comments made by the creator of the event will also be shown.  At the bottom left, there is a button for joining or removing oneself from the event depending on if you have joined the event already or not.  The button in the lower right is for confirming attendance. This button will only be active if it is within the time window set by the creator of the event before the set time.

Learnability:

This interface does pretty well in the learnability category.  The user is greeted with a list of obviously-clickable events in chronological order on the front page.  These are the events they have been invited to attend.  There is no searching or information required by the site before the list of events can be displayed.  Upon clicking an event, they will see all necessary details such as location, time, and who is attending the event.  Upon clicking the button to create a new lunch event, they will see an easy form that asks them for the relevant information.  

...