Jane is the mother of two sons, Bob and Steve. After hearing of underwater basket weaving and its potential to become the next Olympic sport, Bob asks to be enrolled in a class at the nearest pool, located approximately 30 miles away. Recognizing her young son’s promise in the sport, Jane agrees.
At the beginning of the first class, the instructor welcomes the students and their parents. She mentions GetYoRide.com as a tool to facilitate carpooling. A single mother of two, Jane is extremely busy and is interested in working with other parents to take Bob to class. Thus, Jane visits GetYoRide.com and signs up for an account. After signing up, submitting her address, and entering other contact information, she searches for Bob’s underwater basket weaving class and adds herself as a parent looking for a carpool. Subsequently, she is able to view other parents who had also expressed their interest in carpooling for the class.
Using GetYoRide.com, Jane finds two other parents, Alyssa and Vladimir, who are interested in carpooling and live within a five mile radius of her. Alyssa seeks to minimize gas expenditures. Vladimir does not speak English fluently and has a difficult time communicating over the phone. Each parent submits their driving time preferences. Because GetYoRide.com has a simple and intuitive scheduling interface, the three parents manage to set up a carpooling schedule for future classes that ensures an equitable split of the responsibility. Before each scheduled date, the designated parent receives a friendly reminder along with a map of the carpool route.
Everything proceeds according to plan until Steve’s goldfish dies one day, tragically and unexpectedly, and Jane needs to stay home to console her mourning son. She logs on to GetYoRide.com to alert the other parents and find a replacement since she can no longer drive the children. Soon after, Vladimir responds, notifying the parents that he can take the children in place of Jane. Jane successfully swaps days with Vladimir.
Design 1 provides maximum efficiency. A tabbed layout is used to provide quick access to the various tasks the user can perform. The first tab is for the primary task, searching for an event. In that tab, the user progressively enters more information until he can see the event he is interested in and the other people interested in carpooling to that event. At that point, the user sees the value of the site and thus has a motivation for dealing with signing up so the registration process is then initiated.
Only once the user signs up do the other tabs become visible.
This storyboard demonstrates our first design in action.
Design 2 takes an illustrative approach, catering towards those who are illiterate or have poor English skills.
Coming home from Bob’s underwater basket weaving class, Jane remembers hearing about GetYoRide.com from the teacher. She visits the site and arrives at the welcome screen, which allows the user to either log in or sign up.
Design 3: Mobile
Design 3 tackles non-computer interfaces, specifically mobile phones.