 | Storyboard
This interface is where Mary would approve trips for Phyllis and her other direct reports. The tab is titled "approve trips", so she would first click on that tab which is only visible to people in the company with permission to approve trips. The scrollpanel on the left of the page (which is consistent with the Plan a Trip tab) shows a queue of all trips that her direct reports have submitted for her approval, including total dollar amount of each trip. Checking a trip will cause the "Total" box in the panel to update with the sumtotal amount she is about to approve. Mary can use the checkboxes to the left of each trip to mark them for batch approval. If she wants to dig into the details of a particular trip, she can click on the trip in the scrollpanel, which will bring up a google map in the left view with outlines for the travel path of the direct report, along with the stops and the type of each stop. The two panels are independent, and the default view on the left will be the trip at the top of the queue. Once Mary has made her choices using the checkboxes, she can press "approve", which will remove those trips from her queue. | Visibility
The visibility features of this function are similar to the "Create Trip" function.
An attempt is made to make important information, like the requested amount for each trip and the total amount to be approved, visible to the user without requiring the user to do anything on their part. | Learnability
The learnability of this interface should be helped because the map widget is consistent with google maps. In addition, there is instant feedback to the user when they click on a trip (the map changes) and when they check a box (the total amount changes). | Efficiency
This interface balances visibility of details of each trip with the number of trips the manager can view at any given time. In other words, if the manager has many trips to view, they may not see every one of them unless they use the scrollbar. On the other hand, there is no shuffling between screens if she wants to dig into a particular trip.
In this sense, this design may be better for managers who have few direct reports and like to snoop around before approving anything. | Errors
The main error source for this interface is if the user has a lapse regarding which trips they checked off, especially after they have done a lot of scrolling. The sum total box gives some abstract feedback on this, but it may be a common problem.
The user may also potentially get into a mode error if they are confused about whether they are in the "Approve" mode or the "Create" mode because of the similar scrollpanes on the right. |
