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Ben Bitdiddle is beginning a new semester at college. At the beginning of his first lecture, he opens up SETENTS and creates a folder for his class, 6.123, and also creates a new note for the lecture.
Image of folder/note hierarchy
After creating a new note or selecting an existing note, the user will be taken to the text editor, which is central to the application's functionality. This provides the user with the ability to enter rich text into a document to take notes for the class. There are standard controls for formatting text, as would be seen in a normal text editor, but the interesting feature of this view is the ability to record video of the lecture that will be synced with the notes. (For the purposes of this design, we will assume that the user has a front-facing webcam of some sort to record the video)
During lecture, Ben takes notes on what the professor is saying and writing on the chalkboard and at the same time he is recording video of the whole lecture.
Image of text editor view view
On the right side of the view is a toolbar for managing the video recording. There is also a button to allow the user to take a screenshot that can be inserted into the notes. When the screenshot is taken, a new window will appear to so the user can crop the photo to the correct size.
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Before his big test, Ben reviews the notes he has taken during the semester. Since he put off studying until the last minute, he needs to quickly find the parts of the lecture that were the most confusing to him. Ben can easily accomplish the task by clicking on the parts of his notes that are related to the section of the lecture he wants to watch again. While watching one of these sections, Ben realizes there is a typo in his notes. He clicks the edit button, fixes his mistake, and returns to review mode to continue watching the video.
Image of review view
Analysis
Learnability: The note management portion of this design is familiar to users of most file system managers because of the organization of folders and notes. This consistency will probably allow new users to pick up on the organization of this view very quickly. The text editing portion of the interface is pretty standard as well, and users who are familiar with a text editor such as Microsoft Word will be comfortable taking notes in this view. The text editor itself is essentially the same as in the other designs, so the same analysis applies here. This design is probably the simplest to use from the editor view, because it is very natural to record a video of what is seen while the notes are being taken. The idea of taking a screenshot from a live video is also familiar to the user, although they might feel that since they're recording the video they might not also need to take notes. The biggest challenge for learnability in this design is probably the "review" feature of the application. The ability to click on a particular part of text and jump to the corresponding part of the video will not be familiar to the majority of the users, so it will likely take some time for them to become proficient at finding the correct spot in the material that they wish to review.
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