GR2 Designs

Scenario

Peter Higgs recently took a tour of MIT's fusion reactor. He thought the reactor represented a very interesting and important experiment, and was dismayed to find out that MIT had decided to defund the program.  Peter Higgs wanted to find out if there was some way he could help the experiment get its funding back. He decided he wanted to get in touch with a policy maker and ask for the government to fund the experiment. Peter, however is not very politically active, and would not consider himself to be an "activist."  Instead, Peter wants to quickly find out who to contact, and ideally with the least possible amount of work, because Peter has his own life to get back to.

Once he gets home, Peter opens his favorite browser, and goes to the Expect Us website. On this site he enters a small amount of information to find out who the policy makers for his area are.For Peter this is Senator Riddle and Congressman Clarke. Peter decides he wants to contact Senator Riddle, but doesn't think the senator's office will be open when he first decides to do this at 2:00 AM. Instead, Peter uses the Expect Us website's built-in call scheduler to set up a time when his phone will be automatically called and connected to the senator's office.

Storyboard Designs

Design 1

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Learnability - This storyboard emphasizes learnabiltiy because of its focus on one task per window. There is also plenty of explanation to accompany the input fields. It may be unclear to the user how to select multiple policy makers.

Safety - In an effort to maximize learnabilty some safety has been sacrificed. This includes not being able to review or re-record a voice-mail, or cancel a scheduled call.

Efficiency - The ability to select multiple policy makers is present, which is good for efficiency. The segmentation of information into separate screens may be useful for learnability, but this negatively impacts efficiency.

Design 2

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Learnabiltiy - The lack of explanatory text may confuse novice users. The site does not provide strong indication of what the site is for. This story board makes use of external consistency by utilizing common icons that demonstrate the proper affordances for the implied actions.

Safety - The reiteration of previous information helps the user detect mistakes. The cancellation code allows users to correct for mistakes made previously in the scheduling process, but the decision to cancel can only be made at the end of the entire process.

Efficiency - This storyboard only allows for serial scheduling of calls (no batch processing), but all data entry for that call takes place on a single page. This design also relies heavily on clicking but still uses the occasional text field, which may decrease efficiency.

Design 3

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Learnability - The lack of explanatory text may make this design difficult for novice users. The large number of options presented to the user at once may also be daunting for novices. Learnability has been sacrificed for safety and efficiency.

Safety - The confirmation pages as well as frequent edit buttons allows the user to easily catch and fix mistakes without starting over. There is no apparent way for a given user to cancel a scheduled call which may be a safety hazard.

Efficiency - The storyboard makes use of buttons that allows an experienced user to skip ahead to their desired action. The "contact another rep" button allows users to efficiently contact multiple policy makers in one sitting. The frequent use of confirmation and edit screens, while good for safety, slows down experienced users.

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