Scenario

Rachel is the new housing manager of the dorm Dartmoor.  She is taking over from Greg, who is moving on to better and brighter things, but unfortunately was not very organized, and did not have a system of organization.  Instead, he kept his data scattered among Excel spreadsheets and pieces of paper.  Rachel prefers to keep things organized, so she decided to use HManager.

The first thing Rachel does is start collecting all the data left over from Greg, which includes all the past and current projects, as well as how much money that took, how much money she has for the next year.  She already has the residents' information (name, age, email) in a spreadsheet and a email list that contains all the students.

She receives requests from the students, and decides if the requests need to be worked on.  When she does so, she can (optionally) email everyone in the building that she is going to take on the project.  Once she has an estimate on when the projects can be done, and how much money each project will take, she updates the projects with that data, and wants to be able to keep track of dates and the project to "current" status.  At this point, she thinks about sending an emails to broadcast out to the residents to update them on what she is doing.  She wants to be able to keep track of projects that are completed, and be able to view past projects, and another email broadcast can be made.

Designs

Design 1

Rachel starts off with creating a new account on HManager, as Greg did not have an account.  She clicks start.  Clicking start brings her to the startup page, which includes a place to input a house name, as well as a choice to input old data (from Greg) or simply starting anew.  Since she wishes to keep track of everything that has happened, she clicks Input old info.

The startup page already includes the name of the house, and Rachel starts off with inputting old tasks that Greg has left.  The tasks require a task name and a description, and if the task has been completed (or is in the process of completion), she also writes in a date of completion and an amount of money spent.  When she is finished with the tasks, she clicks submit, which saves the data, and the next section, the budget / year, is revealed.  This section is optional.  Rachel does not know the old budget, so only puts down her current budget, and presses submit.  At that point, she realizes that she forgot a task, and mis-typed the budget.  She goes back and corrects the details, then presses either submit button.  She then adds a few of the requested tasks that she will be looking into, and presses submit.  A popup button comes up, and she clicks no to check her work.  Finding no problems, she presses submit again, then yes on the popup button.

She then comes to a page to input the residents, which she does, then presses done.  

This concludes the start up, and she is brought to the startup page.  She sees the tasks that are up already, and notices that there is a task that was moved up by the contracted company, and she clicks the task, which brings up the details in a popup that blocks the screen.  She then clicks edit, which changes the popup to another screen that allows her to edit the details.  She changes the date, and then clicks save.  (On the bottom, accidentally forgot to draw it).  This brings her back to the main page.  She then schedules a previously unscheduled (or future) task in the same way, and decides to email the house to let them know that the task has been scheduled by checking the box that says email.

At a later date, she logs in again, and this time types in the house name.  That brings her directly to the front page.  She needs to delete a resident, and add a new one, and therefore clicks edit residents.  She checks the delete button on that resident, and clicks add resident, and types in the information.  Once that is completed, she clicks submit.  

She is brought back to the main page, and decides to add a new task, based on the emails she gets from the residents.  She creates a new task, and leaves the date and amount of money spent blank, as it is a future task.  

Analysis

• Learnability
  • Good: 
  • Bad:
• Efficiency
  • Good: Most of the web site is rather efficient and streamlined, allowing for quick input of tasks, and quick editing of tasks.  
  • Bad: 
• Safety
  • Good: This system is relatively safe, as most of the aspects can be edited, including the budget, residents, and all tasks, scheduled and not.  Most actions are reversible.
  • Bad: The only problems that may occur are in misspelling the name of the house, which, in login, simply does not log you in, or in creating a new account for the house, in which case, you can simply discard that web site and try again, as the account is not actually created until you first press the submit button.  The other area which may cause concern is the editing of residents.  The only way to change a resident's information is by deleting the resident, and adding the resident again.  

Design 2

Rachel goes the HManager website and logs in with an account that she created.  She has already set up her account with a picture of the building that she manages.  She sees a couple of buttons, she would first like to input the information about past projects that she has inherited from Greg.  She decides to click on the project button and is taken to the Projects screen.  

At the top of the screen is a navigation bar so Rachel can move between different aspects of the HManager application.  When she initially logs in she sees an empty table with the just titles of each section.  On the right side of the screen she sees an Add Project area.  Using the information that Greg provided her she fills out the Add Project for the multiple projects that Greg has completed and was continually working on.  She puts in the information about the date and the cost of each project.  As she adds them she notices that the table on the left updates itself and only shows the projects with finish dates that haven't passed.  She clicks on the View Completed Projects and sees the projects that have dates that have already passed on appear on the table.  

When Rachel clicks on the entries in the table a smaller window pops up where she can edit a project.  When a projects is completed she can return to this screen, click on the project and then edit the projects status whether it was start, in progress, or completed.  She can close the smaller window and return to the normal screen.  She is then curious about what her budget for the year looks like.

On the right side of the screen Rachel can see what the most recent expenses were in the building.  Rachel sees what looks like a bar graph on the left side of the screen and takes a section of her budget and points to a specific date that in the year.  She can see how much of her budget is left in relation to how much of the year is left.  When she hovers over a section of the budget a window pops up.  Giving a summary of the cost, description and the date that the project was completed.

Rachel then clicks on the building status to see an overview of the tasks on the floors.  When she hovers over a floor she can see can quickly see the status of all the projects on the floor.  A small dialogue appears that has the statuses of projects color coded and the dialogue will disappear when she is no longer hovering the mouse over a floor.  Rachel decides to click on a floor and it takes her back to the Projects page where the table on the left of the screen is sorted with that floor appearing at the top.

Rachel wants to take a look at the projects that got submitted by students.  She can give them priorities so that she can add them to the projects later when she realizes there is enough money in the budget to cover the requests for the students.  She can add the suggestions from the students from the Student Request page which will automatically pre-fill the Add Project form with the information that has been entered by the student such as the floor the date and description.

Analysis

• Learnability
  • Good: The titles of each page fit well with what the actual content of the page is.  The color scheme in the building status would help the manager be able to quickly glance and see the status of projects on each floor.  To add projects it is fairly straightforward filling in a form.
  • Bad:  It's not entirely clear when a user can click on a table entry and when they can't.  For example in the table on the Student Request the entries are not clickable and there is a similar table on the Projects page.  The way the budget is laid out for viewing will probably take a user a minute or two to figure out what is going on.  It probably would not be initially clear to the user how the graph of the budget is updated since it is updated automatically based on project finish dates.
• Efficiency
  • Good: It is very easy to quickly edit multiple tasks without having to move back and forth between two screens.  A smaller window appears in front of the main window and when the person closes it the table will stay in the same order except the edited entry.  The house manager can easily add a student request to projects without having to remember or write down all of the information to enter the project by manually having to navigate to the Projects Screen.  The idea that clicking on table entries or a floor takes the house manager to the project page makes it efficient to change projects.  The bar graph is a way that the manager can quickly compare their budget to the rest of the year.
  • Bad: Only being able to edit (which includes making projects are complete) one project at a time might feel inefficiency to an experienced user.
• Safety
  • Good: Projects can be edited from the projects screen.  Though as mentioned in learnability it is not entirely clear that they can be edited from the project screen.  Being able to only edit one project at a time helps with safety, but as mentioned earlier it could present a problem with efficiency for the experienced user.
  • Bad: Can't edit past projects (projects that have a finish date that have passed).  Its not easy to recover from making the error, especially in terms on managing the budget.  The user would have to make a note to themselves that they input the data wrong that their budget has an excess of x amount of dollars.

Design 3

Rachel has just started her job as House Manager of the dorm Dartmoor. She replaced Greg, who wasn’t very organized, but kept records someplace in the office. After locating those records, she logs into her HManager account from the HManager screen.
This displays the HManager Dashboard which, at a glance, shows her budget, projects, and most recent student requests.
To create her own records on HManager, she clicks on the “Create New Project” Button to start creating projects. This takes her to the “Create New Project” dialog, in which she can enter the necessary information, including the project name, the estimated start and end dates, its current status (preset to pending), how much money will be allocated to it, and a brief description of it, along with any notes she might add. Clicking outside of the dialog will return her to the dashboard, as will creating clicking on the
“create” button.
She also checks the student requests, which takes her to another page. In this page she can browse through student requests, and create a project out of a request (in the same manner described above), delete it, or reply either to the student directly or in a broadcast message. For example, she can address a shower faucet problem.
If she chose to send a message, a message form is displayed, along with a short contact list and recently viewed projects list. She can use either to assist her in sending her messages by referring to a specific project or replying to a specific group of contacts.
Later on, she gets relevant information about the shower problem, and updates the project information by clicking on the project in the dashboard, which brings up the dialog below, which she uses to update the project information.

Analysis

• Learnability
  • Everything is presented in an easy to see manner. This interface is not very learnable as is. Hover text might need to be shown to aid the user in knowing what components do what, and directions might also have to be given. However, once learned, the interface is extremely easy to use.
• Efficiency
  • This design is very efficient, since most if not all the relevant information is displayed in the dashboard, and the dialogs ensure that only a few clicks are needed to get anything done.
• Safety
  • The dialogs allow the user to quickly exit them in case they didn’t want to create or update a project, and the student requests page