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Analysis
Design 1: Efficient
Pros
- Learnability: The tab structure follows the real-world metaphor of file folders, a method of organization that most parents would be familiar with.
- Efficiency: The design allows the user to get started very quickly by immediately typing in the event they are looking for upon arriving at site.
- Efficiency: Minimal investment is required since signing in or signing up is only requested after the user has found the event that for which they want to carpool.
- Efficiency: All of the required steps, from searching for an event to finding other interested parents, occurs within a single page.
- Efficiency: A floating sidebar on the right allows the user to quickly access other parts of the form on the page.
- Efficiency: The tab structure allows the user to quickly switch between different tasks.
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- Learnability: Images are easy to understand for people who are not fluent in English.
- Learnability: There isn’t an overwhelming amount of text, so the user simply needs to glance rather than read; by information foraging theory, the interface provides good information scent.
- Learnability: When users are trying to find a carpool, the progress bar clearly communicates how many steps are left in the process.
- Learnability, Efficiency, Safety: Auto-complete helps user understand what they should input.
- Efficiency: The schedule view prioritizes the most vital information first (the user's next pick-up time), while presenting less vital information as links.
- Efficiency: An editable schedule is linked beside the group chat interface, in anticipation of the fact that a major reason why the parents would need to communicate with each other is that they need to swap days.
- Safety: Since nearly all the windows are pop-ups and each of these have a highly visible "X" icon, the user is in control because they can see the homescreen at all times and know that they can easily return to the homescreen once they exit out of the pop-up.
Cons
- Learnability: Images do not mean the same thing to everyone and may actually confuse some people who are unused to seeing them.
- Efficiency: The user must click "Next" every time; the form is not located all on one page.
- Efficiency: The user needs to click through multiple levels of button links to access groups, which could be slow and frustrating if the user has many carpools to keep track of.
- Efficiency, Safety: Pop-up windows require that the user first exit out of the window before going anywhere else. If the user seeks to return to that window, they'll have to go through all the steps again.
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