Jane, a desk worker of 2 years at McCormick, is watching Twilight during her shift when Jillian, a resident, approaches her at desk to pick up a package. After unsuccessfully trying to find the package, Jane opens the Logbook on CollabDesk and writes an entry including a description of what

When the next desk worker, Ben, arrives, he reads the new log entries on CollabDesk. He remembers seeing a package in an odd place behind desk, so he goes back and looks for it. After finding the missing package, he quickly finds the entry, responds to it, and marks it resolved.

Design Sketches

Patricia Saylor

Divya Bajekal

Jonathan Lui

Benji Xie

Storyboard Designs

Storyboard 1 - Tasking

Storyboard 2 - Folder Metaphor

Storyboard 3 - Streamlined Preview

1. After Jane logs in, this is the main view. She quickly sees all of the log messages she hasn’t read yet in the “Unread” section at the top of the left pane. As she scrolls through messages with the up/down arrows, the selected message appears in the viewing area on the top right; once she reads a message, she marks it as read by pressing “Enter”, and it pops down to the bottom section that contains all of the log messages.
2. To write a new entry about the lost package, she just goes to the bottom right corner and starts typing. The date, time, and her name are filled in automatically, and a low default priority is set for the message. She presses “Submit” and her log entry now appears in the left pane for all desk workers to see.
3. When Ben logs in, he reads his unread log messages and remembers he has seen an oddly placed package somewhere behind desk. He finishes reading all the new logs before looking for the package.
4. After finding the misplaced package, Ben uses the search bar to quickly find the log about the missing package. He then clicks “Reply”, and the “Create New Message” box is renamed “Reply to ‘Missing Package’”. He types up a response in the text box and presses Submit. His response now appears under the original entry.

Safety

Don’t automatically mark messages as read when the user scrolls over them; instead the user presses “Enter” to purposefully mark it. This way users can scroll past messages without losing them, and prevents errors if they.
Potential issues if desk worker makes a typo and wants to go back and fix it in the log entry.

Efficiency

Create New Message is always available and is very efficient. You don’t have to click to open a new page, you can just start typing right away. This is one of the most frequently used features.
Good information scent in the left pane because you can view a lot of message titles at once.
automatically filling in date, time, name, and default priority simplify the process of writing messages.
Having to press enter to mark a message as read can be slow if the user doesn’t keep up with them. Could get a large backlog, and could be slow if you haven’t read message in a long time, but most people work once a week.

h5 Learnability
Reminiscent of Piazza, where you can view one thing at a time. A lot of the icons and functionalities are familiar, like searching and ranking on a 5-star system.
Might not be obvious that you can change the time or star ranking when creating a new message.