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For this panel, we knew we had to implement some sort of search and ordering, as there are many restaurants in a given delivery area. However, our computer prototype exposed some design problems that had gone unnoticed. For example, we wanted to highlight the background of selected restaurants, as well as dynamically highlight restaurants when the user hovered over them. However, we never made a distinction between hovering over a selected restaurant or hovering over an unselected restaurant. So, in our final product, we chose two distinct highlighting values. In addition, we also noticed that on the food-ordering sites we were using, restaurants were often listed under multiple categories. Therefore, we made the decision that if a user selected, for example, "Chicago Pizza" under the pizza category, the corresponding "Chicago Pizza" in the American category was also selected.
For this panel, we wanted give the users the flexibility of either inviting Facebook friends or sending a mass e-mail out to a list (or inviting non-Facebook friends). Who is logged in is prominently displayed so there is little chance for a mistake. In addition, the "Add Friends" box for Facebook utilizes the exact Facebook way of filtering/choosing friends, so this offers users a familiar experience. We direct people to enter friends' emails with a grayed out cue in the correct box.
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We initially had two radically different ideas regarding the voting system. One was very similar to how Doodle operates, with a binary voting system (the one we ended up choosing). The other was a "up-vote" "down-vote" system similar to reddit. We eventually decided to incorporate the Doodle system, as it was the most straight forward for the users. In addition, this part was the most difficult to display using our layout. During our computer prototype, we only showed two restaurant possibilities. As one of our classmates pointed out, this design wasn't feasible for scaling. In the end, we decided to implement a scrolling display. Unfortunately, this does cause a significant decrease in visibility. However, we want to give our users the most flexibility in restaurant selection (ie, not limit to only 5), and given this, a user can ultimately select all 30+ restaurants, we needed to have some sort of scrolling display. Lastly, only the organizer can see the "choose" buttons, so there is little in the way of confusion.
This was also another box that we had some trouble designing, as there wasn't enough room on the screen for both aspects. We wanted the social aspect of the chat box, but at the same time, the organization aspect of the order box was also necessary. However, we realized that people probably wouldn't be analyzing their total cost and talking to people at the same time for the most part. Therefore, we combined the two into one tabbed box that defaults to the chat. In addition, we also send order messages to the chat box ("foo has ordered bar") to alert others that there are orders taking place, as during the paper prototype testing we found that some people didn't quite understand that everything about this site is social (including the ordering), so we wanted to take no chances with someone not seeing who has ordered what.
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