Scenario
Ben, a recruiter for a Software company, is looking for a student in the Computer Science department to develop software for mobile devices.
Ben goes to the MIT Jobs site and signs up for an account by providing his name, his role (recruiter), his email address, name of the Company he represents and the password for the website. Next, Ben creates a job post with the following specifications: position- Software Developer, type- internship, Course: 6, job group- Software, required competences- Java, location- Cambridge Massachusetts, application instructions- send resume by email, and deadline: March 11, 2010.
Alyssa is an undergraduate student in Computer Science. She has taken a core Java class (6.005) and is very apt in Java. She is also proficient in Python and C++. She is looking for a summer internship with a tech company. She logs into the MIT Jobs site (using her MIT certificates), She selects the department (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), the job type (Internship) and job group (Software). She sees a listing of opportunities available for her. She finds the post made by Ben, which fits perfectly with her needs and is still within the deadline for applying.
Alyssa decides to contact Ben to inquire about the posting, and get some more details about the project. She writes the message to Ben and sends it. Ben receives the message and replies. They set up follow-up interview times.
Dragos, an undergraduate at MIT studying Computer Science, is also looking for an internship during the summer. Like Alyssa, he is also good in Java. He already interviewed for a company that he is very interested in, but he would like to keep himself posted on a few other interesting opportunities for which he is qualified. He goes to the MIT Jobs site and decides to follow Ben’s job posting so that he gets updates about the posting.
Ben is interested in meeting more people for the position, but he did not receive enough replies. Thus he updates the job position and postpones the deadline by a week. Dragos receives this update. Other applicants send their resume via email to Ben, but none of them has a resume as good as Alyssa's.
Ben then decides that Alyssa will fill the position, and sends an update to all followers of the post that the position is closed. Dragos receives an update regarding the same.
Storyboard designs
Design 1
Design 2
In this design, Ben comes to the website (Figure 1) and clicks on the “Sign Up” button
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(Figure 2_1)
Clicking on this button opens the sign up form (Figure 2_2), as an overlaid page on the original site. Ben enters his details into the form and clicks on “Sign Up”.
(Figure 2_2)
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After Ben decides to hire Alyssa, he clicks on the “Send Message to Followers” link on the post description, and sends a message to all followers (i.e only Dragos here), that the position is now closed.
Design Analysis
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Learnability:
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The interface is learnable as it uses many of the commonly employed affordances, such as buttons, and links. Aspects of the system model (posts, messages etc) are represented well by the interface. Also, the interface uses mostly recognition rather than recall. The interaction style is a combination of direct manipulation with menus and forms. For example, hovering over a post gives instant feedback by displaying a short description of the post, but clicking on “Show More” displays a new form. Novice users should find the interface easy to navigate.
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Efficiency:
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For an MIT student, the process of logging into the website is a little inefficient as it requires an extra click of a button. However, apart from this feature, the design is quite efficient. The use of big icons to represent messages and posts gives the user a large area to point, and thus makes the user interface efficient (using Fitts law). To click on a post/message, the user can click on the icon or on the ‘Show More’ link, thus giving the user a large area to click. The only action, which requires more precise pointing (and some steering as the user has to point while keeping the mouse on the icon or description) is to send message (to creators of the post or to followers of the post), as the user has to point to the “Send Message” link. One aspect of efficiency that this design lacks is there are not many shortcuts for expert users.
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Visibility:
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Most features of the design, including the state, available actions and feedback are visible on all pages. For example, on the home screens, all pages you can go to (Create Post, Browse Posts, Posts I’m following, Post Updates etc.) are represented as big buttons on the screen, and thus are very visible. Hovering over a button highlights it, indicating it is clickable. Any new message highlights the “Messages” button in a different color; similarly, a new post update highlights the “Post Updates” button. While browsing, hovering over an icon of a post highlights it and displays a short description. The description also has all possible actions a user can do with a post (follow, send message to creator etc.). Breadcrumbs are used to indicate which page in the page hierarchy we are on, and also make it possible to go to a parent page. Although we do not have feedback right now for some actions (e.g. there are no messages such as “Post has been created”, “Message has been sent”, “Post has been deleted”), we intend to add these at the top of pages, without altering the conceptual design of any page (these will be similar to the simple messages Gmail displays, and deletes will have options to undo as well).
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Error Prevention:
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Most potential errors are easy to undo. For example, if a user clicks on “Follow” for a post, the “Follow” link changes to “Unfollow” (giving immediate feedback. This allows the user to immediately undo his action. Posts can be created, read, updated and deleted. The only actions that cannot be undone is sending messages, which is a feature of all message sending/receiving programs (including e-mail).