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John is working on the second problem set for UI. He wants to create a timer to remind him of the deadline. One of his friends always turns her assignments in late, so he wants to be able to send her the timer to remind her of her deadline. Both he and his friend (Nicole Shaw, Pat Marx) then want to be able to view the timer, along with timers for other deadlines.
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On the “Timers List” page, users can filter timers based on these states. Users share timers by providing email addresses of other users. If a user with that email address exists, the timer will be added to their “Timers List” in the “proposed by another user” state.
Storyboard
Going to the website takes John to the “Timers List” page. Here, John wants to create a new timer, so he clicks on the “Create New Timer” button.
This takes him to the “View/Create/Edit A Timer” page, where John fills out the details of the event and clicks Done,” which takes him back to the “Timers List” page.
Now, John’s group members see the proposed timer on their “Timers List” page. By clicking the question mark icon to the right of the timer name, they can change the timer’s state from “proposed” to “upcoming.”
Analysis
This design has positive and negative aspects. One positive aspect with regard to learnability is that it is very heavy on immediate feedback. Upon selecting different states, the list of timers can immediately change to show the new filter criteria. Since upon creating a new event, the user is taken back to the "Timers List" page, the "Timers List" can be automatically scrolled to show the new event in its location. We are given the constraint that users must input certain amounts of information about each timer--a somewhat tedious process. However, given this, the user interface is quite efficient. Finally, the design has a high degree of safety in most regards. Users can filter timers based on all states, so state selections (i.e. changing a timer to completed) can easily be undone. Also, users can remove unshare a timer by removing users on the "View/Create/Edit a Timer" page.
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In the new timer dialog John has a few options about how he can share his new timer. He must first enter when the timer is set to expire, then decide who to explicitly invite via Facebook or email. The where box is optional but allows John to share his timer with people who are withen a certain radius of that location. When his partner logs on they would see a new invite in the sidebar if John invited them via email or facebook, or could find nearby timers using the local tab. Once John's partner accepts the timer, they both can see when the other completes the task. The creator of the timer is given editing and deleting privileges of their timers. So if the due date of the users assignment changes, John can edit the timer to reflect the change. On the same page of the application, John and his partner can scroll through other timers and mark them as complete.
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Analysis
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Being a single page app, this app should be extremely easy to learn. There are very few options and as such it is simple to learn. This simplicity also makes the application extremely efficient because you don't have to click through many menus to do what you need. Every timer is visible from the main page and is one mouse click away from being expanded. Because only the creator of a timer can edit or delete it, it is very safe for the creator of a timer. A safety issue that could come up is when a creator deletes a timer that other people rely on.
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This design involves two pages: managing/viewing all timers and working with individual timers.
Storyboard
unmigrated-wiki-markupJohn arrives at the timer creation page after clicking the link from the main page. He can enter the date by typing into an input field or by clicking a calendar icon which displays a calendar from which the date can be selected. The time can also be set via another input field. A title and description can be entered, and there is a formatting toolbar for the description. Sharing can also be specified here and is discussed in the next section. After creating a timer, its specific details are shown in a timer view window.
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[figure 1: create\]
Wiki Markup
[figure 2: sharing\]unmigrated-wiki-markup
To view timers, John goes to the main page, which has a list of timers that he has created or that have been shared with him by other users. Timers created by others are italicized, and the timer's creator is shown underneath. They are ordered chronologically with the nearest events at the top and later events below. A countdown is displayed next to the time for a particular timer. Pending timers that another user has shared with John appear in red text in his timeline. They are also displayed in a list of pending timers which can be found in the upper right corner. From either location, John can add the timer or ignore the sharing action. Clicking on a timer title goes to a new page showing details for that specific timer.
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[figure 3: viewing\]
Analysis
In terms of learnability, this design is fairly good. The links for the main tasks are immediately visible, and the links for other tasks are visible on a specific timer's page or accessible from an arrow next to a timer's title on the main page. However, the sharing system is not probably great for learnability. Because there are two possible methods to select users to share a timer with, there is some inconsistency in how the same information is displayed across these two methods. Futhermore, it might not be obvious that a red timer in the viewing page is a pending timer share from another user. The pending timers button on the upper right helps the user eventually learn the notation unless he reads the instructions.
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