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- Learnability for this interface is generally low, since users have to keep knowledge of commands and valid tags in their head, rather than having that knowledge available "in the world."
- In addition, text based interfaces are very uncommon in web applications, so even user familiar with such interfaces may be caught off-guard.
- However, its resemblance to a Unix shell may increase learnability for users who are familiar with Linux or who use the command line frequently
Visibility
- For low numbers of results, the visibility for this design is very good because all of the auxiliary information is clearly displayed in a table, in a straighforward, easy to browse format.
- However, as the number of results becomes larger, visibility decreases as the user needs to do a large amount of scrolling to see all the results. By the time they reach the bottom of the list, they may have forgotten what was at the top.
Efficiency
- For expert users, this interface is extremely efficient, since most of the input is done on the keyboard.
- However, things like scrolling through a long list of items will suffer in efficiency, since the user must switch to using the mouse.
- Pure text output has the advantage of high compatibility with other applications. For example, the user can easily copy their schedule and paste it into the body of an email, or write a script to download their list of courses to a spreadsheet.
Error prevention
- Error prevention and correction for this design is fairly poor. For example, if a user tries to input an invalid tag, the system will do nothing to stop them from committing the mistake until they try to enter the tag and are unpleasantly surprised by an error message. In addition, if a user wishes to change their search criteria they need to start the entire search over again.
Design 3: Balloons
Task: Search
When Miak first enters the site, he sees a bunch of tags like “HASS-D 4” and “NO FINAL” scattered around the screen. There is a marked area at the center of the screen where he can drag and drop tags with the search criteria he wants. Ben selects “HASS-D 2”, “HASS-D 4”, “HASS-D 5”, “CI-H”, and “FITS MY SCHEDULE”
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