Scenario
Phil and Vivian are a married couple that lives in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood with their 3 year old Boston Terrier, Will. Despite giving Will all the attention in the world, Phil and Vivian believe it is important for Will to spend time socializing with other dogs as well. During one of their daily walks, Phil and Vivian run into another dog owner, and the couple stops to let Will play. Unfortunately, the larger dog gets a little too aggressive and bites Will. Determined to find a smaller, less aggressive playmate for Will, Phil and Vivian Google search for a solution and come across DogPack.
The two decide to try out the new site in an attempt to find friends for Will. After quickly filling in their biographical information, they begin inputting Will’s information. The website requires them to fill in Will’s name, gender, and breed, in addition to uploading a picture of their Boston Terrier. With their profile created, the owners are now able to view different dogs and dog groups around the area. Luckily for them, there is a Back Bay Small Dog Group that meets regularly on the esplanade on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not only do these times fit in both Phil and Vivian’s schedule, but the group has established a limit on the size of dogs that can join. Phil and Vivian quickly sign up to join the group. Once approved, they download the groups meetup schedule to their Google calendar. Now they can’t wait to bring Will to meet his new friends!
Individual Designs
Individual Designs - Shashank
Storyboards
Design 1 (Social Network)
This is the main page of DogPack. Phil and Vivian view this page and are attracted by the pictures of various dogs filled with possibilities of finding a playmate for Will. Feeling excited the two go ahead and create a profile for Will.
Phil started filling in the information to create a profile for Will. He shares Will's name, age, size and also uploaded a few pictures of Will, trying to find Will some "friends".
Phil tried to find an interesting activity in the vicinity for Will to join. He searched the activities by location, time and other details. The map in the bottom page shows the location of each result.
However, Phil failed to find a suitable activity. He decides to host an activity for Will. Phil post the activity information and invites others to join in. This notifies "friends" and also has the option to be listed publicly
in results for activities searches by other dog owners.
Analysis
Design 2 (Mobile Application)
Phil and Vivian create a profile for Will
On the map, they look for dogs nearby with a good star rating. The star rating tells whether or not DogPack thinks the two dogs would be a good match (based on size, breed etc.)
Phil and Vivan find Rosey, a 3 year old Chihuahua that lives nearby. They believe she is a good match for Will so they they click the Meetup button.
Phil and Vivian propose a time, date and location to meet up with Rosey. Now they can't wait for Will to meet their new friend!
Learnability - The learnability is fairly high for this interface due to its external consistency with many other mobile apps. People who have used mobile apps are familiar with the map based interface with widgets that, when selected, bring you to a detail page.
Efficiency - For casual use, this interface is fairly efficient. The map acts as a shortcut for users to find users in their vicinity visually, versus scrolling through a list. For extended use, however, the lack of any kind of history hurts the efficiency of the app. There is no way to easily view or find dogs that you have met up with in the path.
Safety - One of the benefits of mobile apps is that almost all the interaction is done by pressing buttons. This leaves less room for errors that are caused by using more complex controls. Furthermore, there are no modes to cause mode errors, or dangerous commands that can cause description errors. One issue with this design is the inability to undo an operation. If someone were to make a mistake and press the invite button on the invite page, there is no way to undo it.
Design 2 (Forum / Blog Approach)
In their quest for searching suitable dogs for Will, Phil and Vivian, come across this website.
They are able to search for groups in their vicinity based on criteria such as breed and locality.
They find "Back Bay Small Dogs" in the search results. The search result lists a brief description, a few tags (such as categories) and a link to learn more about this group.
Clicking on the "More" button they come across the main page for the group. Here they can learn about the group, it's activities, members, and upcoming events.
Interested to read more about the group's activities, they click on the Blog section.
The Members page provides a brief introduction to the dogs and their owners and contact info, if provided.
Clicking on the Calendar in the Group's landing page, they can learn more about the specific event (such as date, location and comments/updates)
Analysis
Learnability : This interface is learnable due it's simple interface that's similar to most forum style websites, maintaining external consistency. The interface focuses on larger group activities and makes it easy to find groups based on certain criteria.
Efficiency : In terms of efficiency, the interface might be limited by it's forum/blog style approach. Though, the user gets a brief overview of each group in the search results, they are still required to visit each group's page to learn about activities and schedules. It's not straight forward to schedule individual activities with specific members.
Safety : The scope for mistakes is fairly limited for users since they don't have permissions to make changes to Groups, since only the admin/group owner will have permissions to edit them.Individual comments posted can be edited.
This interface might be limited by it's lack of visuals which might make it un-intuitive to users not familiar with forums and blogs (though a small user population).