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- Stronger classification of messages: 1) a message can either be an 'issue' (meaning that it is something that needs to be resolved) or a 'note' (meaning there is nothing to be resolved); 2) a message may fall into any of the following categories: lost/found (lost phone), desk supplies (ran out of red paper), repairs (elevator broken), requests (many residents requesting fans during spring), miscellaneous.
- Integrated resident database. When creating a new message, you can include a link to a resident's information by using the '@' symbol preceding their name. This will also enable autocomplete on that name. For example, if Susan brought something to desk, the desk worker could type "@Sus" and it would suggest "Susan Sample"; using this suggestion turns her name into a link that, when clicked, will open a dialog window with more dorm-specific information about Susan, like her class year, her room number, and her telephone number.
- Priority on a low/medium/high scale indicated by a colored flag and corresponding text (to replace the priority stars)
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Safety
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To determine which messages the desk worker has read, instead of just basing it on whether they scrolled over it, we will instead mark it as read when the user presses "Enter" while the focus is on that log title in the left pane. This way, if a user accidentally over-scrolls, they don't lose track of the skipped messages. We anticipated potential issues if desk worker makes a typo in the log entry, or if she accidentally created an extra log entry. To handle this, we allow users to edit and delete only their own messages, so as to prevent malicious editing of other people's messages.
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Efficiency
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Create New Message is always available and is very streamlined because it is one of the most frequently used features. You don’t have to click to open a new page, you can just start typing right away in the text box. As well, a lot of the little details like the date, time, and author are filled in automatically but can be modified if necessary. The left pane has a lot of information scent with the titles and short excerpts of each message displayed, but one downside is that you can only see one full message at a time. This can help not overwhelm the user with too much information at a time. A potential slow step is having to press enter to mark a message as read, particularly if the user is behind on reading the logs; however, we estimated that since each user works desk at least once a week, they should have at most around 10-15 messages to read, and the time to read a message will probably overshadow the time to press enter.
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Learnability
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- Autocomplete for message headings that will also fill in an appropriate skeleton for the message. For example, selecting "Missing Phone" will fill this in as the title and will fill in a skeleton message like "__ lost her phone on ___ and reported it today. It was last seen ___. Phone description: ____".
- Priority on a low/medium/high scale indicated by a colored flag and corresponding text (to replace the priority stars).
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Safety
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To determine which messages the desk worker has read, instead of just basing it on whether they scrolled over it, we will instead mark it as read when the user presses "Enter" while the focus is on that log title in the left pane. This way, if a user accidentally over-scrolls, they don't lose track of the skipped messages. We anticipated potential issues if desk worker makes a typo in the log entry, or if she accidentally created an extra log entry. To handle this, we allow users to edit and delete only their own messages, so as to prevent malicious editing of other people's messages.
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Efficiency
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Create New Message is always available and is very streamlined because it is one of the most frequently used features. You don’t have to click to open a new page, you can just start typing right away in the text box. As well, a lot of the little details like the date, time, and author are filled in automatically but can be modified if necessary. The left pane has a lot of information scent with the titles and short excerpts of each message displayed, but one downside is that you can only see one full message at a time. This can help not overwhelm the user with too much information at a time. A potential slow step is having to press enter to mark a message as read, particularly if the user is behind on reading the logs; however, we estimated that since each user works desk at least once a week, they should have at most around 10-15 messages to read, and the time to read a message will probably overshadow the time to press enter. The autocomplete features will also improve efficiency when writing similar messages or writing about the same person.
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Learnability
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The design is reminiscent of an email client where you have your list of emails on the left and you can view only one of them at a time. However, it differs by having a designated Create New Message, but this is easily learnable because it's always available and always in the same spot. Icons are grounded in familiar paradigms, like a pencil for edit and a trashbin for delete, and other buttons and areas are clearly labelled. One thing we think might be less obvious is the affordance for changing the time and star ranking when creating a new message. The resident-tagging feature using an '@' sign might be harder to learn at first, so we will have to add some visibility to this feature; once a user sees it though, it should be easy to learn and remember because it is very similar to the facebook-tagging scheme that desk workers are used toThe design is reminiscent of an email client where you have your list of emails on the left and you can view only one of them at a time. However, it differs by having a designated Create New Message, but this is easily learnable because it's always available and always in the same spot. Icons are grounded in familiar paradigms, like a pencil for edit and a trashbin for delete, and other buttons and areas are clearly labelled. One thing we think might be less obvious is the affordance for changing the time and star ranking when creating a new message.