Scenario

Our final project will focus on the tasks of creating/viewing a schedule, submitting changes to a schedule, and monitoring attendance.

1. Sam is a ski and snowboard instructor at Snowy Hills.  It is the beginning of October and he would like to submit his schedule for the upcoming season online.  (Darryl, an administrator, has already entered the schedule for the new season.  He has the first possible date to 12/16 and the last possible date to 3/16.  He has already selected which shifts will offer children’s and racing lessons and which days will offer the night shift.)  Sam has already received a username/password from the ski school and has logged in.  Sam signs up to teach snowboarding on Friday evenings, children on Saturday during the day, and skiers on most Tuesday evenings.  He has a couple of  Tuesdays that he can’t teach and he is also available during several holidays to teach children.  After filling out the online form, he submits it for approval.
2. After all the instructors have submitted their schedules, one of the ski school administrators, Darryl, logs in to approve instructors shifts.  He sends an email from Outlook Express to all the instructors who were hired letting them know which shifts still need additional instructors.
3. All of Sam’s shifts are approved and Sam realizes that he can instruct children one Sunday that needs more instructors.  He logs back into the website and submits a request to have that shift added to his schedule.
4. Darryl sees that Sam has submitted a request and approves his schedule change.
5. It’s the end of the first day of the season.  Darryl was the supervisor for the day, and all of his instructors except one, Hillary, showed up for their shifts.  Darryl wants to mark that Hillary missed her shift without notifying him ahead of time, so logs into the schedule website and marks Hillary as absent from her shift.
6. It’s now December and Sam realizes that he has to be out of town for his day-time job one of the Tuesdays he signed up for in January.  He goes to the website where he submitted his schedule and submits a request to be removed from the schedule for that particular Tuesday.
7. Darryl approves his request, and he is automatically marked as excused on the schedule for that day.
8. It is the end of the season and Jimmy is interested in finding out how often his instructors were excused from their shifts or missed them without calling.  He logs into the scheduling program and views each instructors schedule.  Since his supervisors (who also have admin privileges in the scheduling program) were diligent about marking absences, he can see for each instructor what days they missed and what days they were excused from.  He then uses this information to help him decide which instructors should be re-hired the following season.

Designs

Design 1

Design 1 is based on the ideas of modes.  It allows users to specify which discipline they are teaching each shift by selecting the appropriate mode and then clicking on the shift.  Similarly, it allows supervisors to mark absences (excused or unexcused) by selecting that mode and clicking on the appropriate shift.

Storyboard

Darryl would like to enter the schedule for the new season.  He sets the first possible date to 12/9 and the last possible date to 3/23.  He also selects which shifts will offer children’s and racing lessons and which days will offer the night shift.

Sam is a ski and snowboard instructor at Snowy Hills.  It is the beginning of October and he would like to submit his schedule for the upcoming season online.  He has already received a username/password from the ski school and has logged in.  Sam signs up to teach snowboarding on Friday evenings, children on Saturday during the day, and skiers on most Tuesday evenings.  He has a couple of  Tuesdays that he can’t teach and he is also available during several holidays to teach children.  After filling out the online form, he submits it for approval.

After all the instructors have submitted their schedules, one of the ski school administrators, Darryl, logs in to approve instructors shifts.  He sends an email from Outlook Express to all the instructors who were hired letting them know which shifts still need additional instructors.

All of Sam’s shifts are approved and Sam realizes that he can instruct children one Sunday that needs more instructors.  He logs back into the website and submits a request to have that shift added to his schedule.

Darryl sees that Sam has submitted a request and approves his schedule change.

It’s the end of the first day of the season.  Darryl was the supervisor for the day, and all of his instructors except one, Hillary, showed up for their shifts.  Darryl wants to mark that Hillary missed her shift without notifying him ahead of time, so logs into the schedule website and marks Hillary as absent from her shift.

It’s now December and Sam realizes that he has to be out of town for his day-time job one of the Tuesdays he signed up for in January.  He goes to the website where he submitted his schedule and submits a request to be removed from the schedule for that particular Tuesday.

Darryl approves his request, and he is automatically marked as excused on the schedule for that day.

It is the end of the season and Jimmy is interested in finding out how often his instructors were excused from their shifts or missed them without calling.  He logs into the scheduling program and views each instructors schedule.  Since his supervisors were diligent about marking absences, he can see for each instructor what days they missed and what days they were excused from.  He then uses this information to help him decide which instructors should be re-hired the following season.

Analysis

Learnability

Pros: 

• The interface uses a calendar view to make it easy for users to visualize when the dates are and presents dates in US format since the ski area is in the U.S.
• There is also internal consistency between views since the submitting initial schedule, changing schedule, and managing attendance views all look similar.
• The application behaves like other applications with modes such that the cursor does one specific action per mode (like Adobe).

Cons:

• A user may be confused why clicking on a particular shift does not give them the option to add that shift if they haven't first selected a mode.  We can mitigate this problem by providing a feedback message if a user clicks on a shift while not in the mode. 
• If users don't understand the concept of a mode, it will be very difficult for them to learn to use the system.
• The calendar is shown with months stacked on top of each other, which may be inconsistent with other calendars.
• The user may confuse icons if they are not designed well and think they are selecting a different shift/discipline than they are.
• A user might not realize that to remove a shift there is a specific mode. They may think that they just need to click on the button for that shift since that is how text boxes work.

Efficiency

Pros:

• Once a user has selected a mode, it is very quick for him/her to select different shifts within that mode.
• We could have an option at the top to select all shifts for a particular day of the week.
• Users can see their entire schedules in one view and can easily know what days of the week their shifts are on.
• An admin can approve an instructor's entire schedule at once.

Cons:

• It takes a long time for a user to switch between modes, so if the user needs to mark multiple different types of shifts, the efficiency will be worse.
• Admins can't see who is on the schedule for a particular day from the same view where they approve schedules, which might mean that they had to go back and forth a lot to see if they have sufficient instructor coverage.

Safety

Pros:

• It is easy to undo any change by using the delete shift mode.
• A user is unlikely to accidentally delete a shift since they have to actually select a specific mode.
• Instructors can't modify each others schedules.
• Instructor will immediately see if they selected the wrong shifts since they see everything in one view.
• The schedule is always modifiable with admin approval so no change is impossible to recover

Cons:

• A user may forget which mode he/she is in and sign up for the wrong discipline.  We try to mitigate this by having the mouse cursor change.  While this can be undone, it takes time. Furthermore the user might not notice that the icon was incorrect and the wrong shift was selected.  This would be especially bad if he was submitting a change schedule request and then had to submit a separate one that had to be approved again if a mistake was made.
• Admins may accidentally not have enough instructors for a particular day since the approval does not show them who else is on the schedule for a given day when making changes

Design 2

Storyboard

Darryl would like to enter the schedule for the new season.  He sets the first possible date to 12/9 and the last possible date to 3/23.  He also selects which shifts will offer children’s and racing lessons and which days will offer the night shift.

Sam is a ski and snowboard instructor at Snowy Hills.  It is the beginning of October and he would like to submit his schedule for the upcoming season online.  He has already received a username/password from the ski school and has logged in.  Sam signs up to teach snowboarding on Friday evenings, children on Saturday during the day, and skiers on most Tuesday evenings.  He has a couple of  Tuesdays that he can’t teach and he is also available during several holidays to teach children.  After filling out the online form, he submits it for approval.

After all the instructors have submitted their schedules, one of the ski school administrators, Darryl, logs in to approve instructors shifts.  He sends an email from Outlook Express to all the instructors who were hired letting them know which shifts still need additional instructors.

All of Sam’s shifts are approved and Sam realizes that he can instruct children one Sunday that needs more instructors.  He logs back into the website and submits a request to have that shift added to his schedule.

Darryl sees that Sam has submitted a request and approves his schedule change.
It’s the end of the first day of the season.  Darryl was the supervisor for the day, and all of his instructors except one, Hillary, showed up for their shifts.  Darryl wants to mark that Hillary missed her shift without notifying him ahead of time, so logs into the schedule website and marks Hillary as absent from her shift.
It’s now December and Sam realizes that he has to be out of town for his day-time job one of the Tuesdays he signed up for in January.  He goes to the website where he submitted his schedule and submits a request to be removed from the schedule for that particular Tuesday.

Darryl approves his request, and he is automatically marked as excused on the schedule for that day.
It is the end of the season and Jimmy is interested in finding out how often his instructors were excused from their shifts or missed them without calling.  He logs into the scheduling program and views each instructors schedule.  Since his supervisors were diligent about marking absences, he can see for each instructor what days they missed and what days they were excused from.  He then uses this information to help him decide which instructors should be re-hired the following season.

Analysis

Learnability

Pros:

• The calendar view is generally consistent with both computer calendars and paper calendars.  The calendar metaphor is also appropriate.
• Dates are presented in the typical American format (Month DD, YYYY).  This is good since the targeted user population resides in the United States.
• There is internal consistency:  day, evening, night always appear in the same chronological order and the order of the disciplines in the dialog box is always the same
• Tabs, expand/collapse selection buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, etc. all behave consistently with external applications
• Mouse over the calendar gives feedback in the form of highlighting the day being moused over and indicating that the days are clickable

Cons:

• Requesting to be excused from a shift requires the instructor changing his selection for that shift to “None” which may not be intuitive
• Need better icons:  the icon for night is not very good (is supposed to be a clock pointing to midnight but looks too much like a power on/off button) and the icon for evening could be misinterpreted as night.
• The way for an admin to view an individual instructor’s schedule (for viewing attendance) is not very straightforward, since it involves clicking on the instructor’s name from the Attendance tab.
• The user might not realize there is not a way to request correcting an attendance mistake through this interface.

Efficiency

Pros:

• It is easy for an instructor to view his own schedule and see which requests still need to be approved.  The calendar also makes it easy for an instructor to figure out what their schedule for the upcoming week looks like, for example.
• Admins can easily see which days have changes that need approval.
• Requesting a change is very fast, since it just requires clicking on a day, changing their selection, and submitting.
• Defaults are set well (e.g. all the check boxes are checked for approval initially, the default is “present” for recording attendance).
• The supervisor for a particular discipline needs only expand the shift they’re supervising under the “View” tab to see the relevant instructors for their shift/discipline

Cons:

• Instructors whose schedules vary dramatically from week to week must open a dialog box for every single day they wish to work when initially entering their schedule, since they cannot take advantage of the “repeat” functionality.
• Approving the schedule by day rather than by instructor is awkward.  If the admin does not wait until all the instructors submit their schedule, the admin will have to click on all the days that need approval separately even if only one instructor’s schedule is pending approval.
• The dialog box is likely to obscure the calendar, so the user will have to move the dialog box around to see the entire calendar.

Safety

Pros:

• An instructor (who is not an admin) has absolutely no way of modifying another instructor’s schedules
• A limit of having one dialog box open at a time ensures that a user never accidentally performs an action on the wrong dialog box.
• If instructors make wrong changes, they can just open up the dialog boxes and change their selections again (worst case is that the admin already approved their wrong changes and will have to approve again when they fix it); if an instructor changes his selection for a given shift back to his original (currently approved) selection, the system will behave as if no changes have been made.

Cons:

• There is no undo stream (though having one would probably be very confusing due to the use of dialog boxes).
• If the user turns on “repeat until end of season” for a wrong selection and overwrites his selections on future days, the only way of recovering from that mistake is to reselect the correct selection for all the days he overwrote.
• Since the admin selects the shifts/disciplines by day, if an instructor happens to be submitting his schedule before the admin finalizes what shifts and disciplines will exist on a given day (or if the instructor arbitrarily deletes a shift in the middle of the season), then the data the instructors enter for that shift will be lost (not to mention that the instructors will be very confused as to whether or not that shift actually exists).
• There is no simple way to recover if admin accidentally approves something he should not have approved.  This is probably necessary functionality but would add complexity to the admins’ interface.

Design 3

Storyboard

Sam is a ski and snowboard instructor at Snowy Hills. It is the beginning of October and he would like to submit his schedule for the upcoming season online. He has already received a username/password from the ski school and has logged in. Sam signs up to teach snowboarding on Friday evenings, children on Saturday during the day, and skiers on most Tuesday evenings. He has a couple of Tuesdays that he can’t teach and he is also available during several holidays to teach children. After filling out the online form, he submits it for approval.

After all the instructors have submitted their schedules, one of the ski school administrators, Darryl, logs in to approve instructors shifts. He sends an email from Outlook Express to all the instructors who were hired letting them know which shifts still need additional instructors.

All of Sam’s shifts are approved and Sam realizes that he can instruct children one Sunday that needs more instructors.  He logs back into the website and submits a request to have that shift added to his schedule.

Darryl sees that Sam has submitted a request and approves his schedule change.

It’s the end of the first day of the season. Darryl was the supervisor for the day, and all of his instructors except one, Hillary, showed up for their shifts. Darryl wants to mark that Hillary missed her shift without notifying him ahead of time, so logs into the schedule website and marks Hillary as absent from her shift.

It’s now December and Sam realizes that he has to be out of town for his day-time job one of the Tuesdays he signed up for in January. He goes to the website where he submitted his schedule and submits a request to be removed from the schedule for that particular Tuesday.

Darryl approves his request, and he is automatically marked as excused on the schedule for that day.

It is the end of the season and Jimmy is interested in finding out how often his instructors were excused from their shifts or missed them without calling. He logs into the scheduling program and views each instructors schedule. Since his supervisors were diligent about marking absences, he can see for each instructor what days they missed and what days they were excused from. He then uses this information to help him decide which instructors should be re-hired the following season.

Analysis

Learnability

Pros:

• This design aims for simplicity, utilizing drop-down menus for discipline/shift/date selection, and buttons to submit selections. Thus, the user is not bogged down by any modes or complicated interfaces.
• The screen to view one's schedule is very similar to what exists now (a simple listing of the instructor's schedule, with one line per shift), so the interface to view and manage their own schedule is consistent with what they're used to.
• There is a lot of repeated functionality between screens, providing internal consistency such that the users will not have to acclamate to too many different interfaces.

Cons:

• It does not take advantage of the natural tendency to use calendars to represent schedules, losing out on an opportunity for external consistency.
• The manage attendance page might not make it clear that the admin has to hit Submit for the changes to actually take effect.

Efficiency

Pros:

• To select the same discipline/shift/day-of-the-week combination for every week is very quick – it requires only 7 button presses, as opposed to one click per shift.
• The interface to add a shift is very clean; an instructor doesn't have to search through his/her current schedule to be sure to click the right icon, but instead follows the same simple selection procedure as when he/she created the schedule in the first place.
• An admin can approve an entire instructor's schedule at once.

Cons:

• Because this interface is heavily text-based, it does not provide the ease of efficiency granted by seeing schedules in a calendar-based layout.
• In order to select only every other Friday, for example, the instructor must select every single shift separately, or select "Friday (all)" and then remove every unwanted Friday from the list.
• There is no way to know that a discipline/shift/date combination is invalid until the user tries to add it and the add fails.
• Admins cannot see the already-approved schedules from the Approve Shifts page, so it is unclear which shifts actually need more instructors.

Safety

Pros:

• When submitting a shift, the user must not only enter the desired shifts, but then click Submit Schedule for Approval before the schedule is submitted.
• When rejecting shifts, the admin gets prompted with an "Are you sure?" dialog to avoid accidentally rejecting shifts.
• When an instructor requests a schedule change, it is displayed on his/her schedule page in an "Unapproved Changes" section, to make it clear what the result of the action was in case it needs to be undone.
• Instructors can't modify each other's schedules.
• Changes require admin approval.

Cons:

• Admins might approve too many or too few instructors for a given shift, since the approval display doesn't tell who is already approved for that shift.
• There is no undo option - instead, a user has to find the trash icon or checkbox to remove an incorrectly-added shift.