Scenario
Alisha’s best friend is having a 21st birthday bash at a nearby fancy dance-club-slash-bar this Saturday, and Alisha is obviously invited. She wants to look her best for the occasion, both for her friend and for any cute guys she might find hanging out at the bar, but she also wants to have fun and just dance, because her last week at MIT was incredibly stressful. Because the bar is somewhat fancy, she’d like to find a somewhat “classy” little black dress that she can dance in, but all of her old dresses are either too flashy or too hard to move in.
However, one of her friends recently told her about the Infinite Closet, a site that allows users to exchange their older dresses for different ones, using “points” gained by sending clothes to the site. Since Alicia’s interested in getting rid of some of her older party dresses while she’s at it, she takes some pictures of some of her old dresses, makes an account on the site with her credit card, and uploads her dress pictures for points. She then packages her old dresses and ships them to the site’s provided address, as the site has promised to assign her more points once it actually receives the dresses she sends.
But now that Alicia has some points gained by uploading her old dresses, she starts browsing through the dresses listed on the site. She selects first the dress color, then sorts by size, style, and other categories, and eventually finds the little black dress she wants. She uses her points to purchase the dress, which the site ships to her in a few days, and she wears that dress to the party and has a blast.
Note for the scenario described:
We came to an impasse while trying to figure out whether dresses would be sold between-users using a points system, or between the user and the site (also using a points system). The current scenario assumes the interaction is between user and site; the user can “upload” pictures of clothing they want to sell to the site to immediately receive points, but they are then responsible for actually shipping the clothes in question to the site, and they’ll get more points once the clothes are actually received. Abuses are discouraged by the user needing to provide their credit card information to actually create an account on the site.
Designs
Our three designs are listed below. The actual design (sketches + storyboard) is attached as a linked .PDF file, but its analysis is listed below.
Design 1: Clothing Racks Abstraction
Learnability:
This design aims to be consistent in look and feel across several different screens, as seen by the constantly-available side bar and the fact that most elements are not repositioned. (The “Register” screen is currently not similar to the rest of the site; this could be changed in the next iteration.) The title of each page is usually clearly visible, reminding the user of what page they're on, and it is fairly simple to navigate the application using the sidebar. Popups, which disable access to the rest of the site until they are dealt with, are clearly outlined and indicated as such, so as to not be confusing.
...