Scenario

Robert Miller has just finished a long day of work as a trader in a prestigious Wall Street investment firm. The job has grueling hours, and at times he doubts his life decision, but he hopes to "make it big" in the coming months with a tip-off that he got from a friend in the airline industry. He likes living in NY, but has only been there for a couple of months, so he doesn't yet have the money to move into his own place. Instead, he shares a loft apartment with four of his college pals. They're great guys, but absentminded at times. Rob walks into the loft, all ready to plop on the couch and vegetate while watching some Modern Family. He replays the day in his head, upset that he lost out on the office football pool to Brad, who doesn't even care about football and just bought a box to not be left out. Well, thinks Brad, suits him right for thinking that the Jets would actually turn out to be a decent team. Rob gets up to get a beer, and glances at the coffee table, the mail strewn all over it. It was Amy's turn to sort the mail, and obviously she hasn't, which angers Rob, seeing as how he usually ends up sorting it. He looks through the envelopes, seeing if he has anything interesting. Then, he finds an envelope, slightly larger than the rest, with "Urgent, Overdue Notice" stamped in angry red letters across the front. He tears off the top of the envelope, and its from the electric company. Didn't he tell Ben to mail this weeks ago? Now there'd be fines to pay, and the whole thing would be a huge hassle. Rob waddles over to his computer, dejected. There's nothing that he can do about the electric bill now, although Ben is certainly going to get a talking to. And Amy, for that matter. But there is no way that Rob is letting something like this happen again. He's not made of money, and he certainly doesn't plan on shelling it out in fines. Bills are high enough as it is. Luckily, he remembers something that Bethany, a fellow trader, mentioned at work. She was telling him about a new site that she used to take care of her bills, and Rob wanted to give it a look. He types in "www.housebill.com" into Google Chrome and sets to work. 

Rob arrives at the first page of the site and takes a look. 'Hey, this looks cool,' he thinks to himself, 'and its exactly what I was looking for.' Rob clicks on the sign-up button and signs up for an account. He uses his favorite username 'BobtheBanker'. He confirms his username and password, and submits the form. Once logged in, Rob makes an additional household, titled "NYC Loft" for the apartment that he currently lives in. He is not sure that his suitemates have accounts on the site, so he shares the household with them by typing their emails into the form. For this "NYC Loft" household, he adds the electrical bill. Not wanting to wait for more overdue fines, he writes a check to the electrical company, and goes downstairs to mail it. when he comes back to his computer, he enters the bill as "paid" on housebill.com. After that, Rob puts in the gas and water bills. He looks over these bills in the calendar view before logging off.

Design

Design 1

dd

Analysis 1

Learnability

This design is very learnable to the first time user.

Visibility

Efficiency

Efficiency may not be as optimal as it could be. Users have to add bills individually so a user creating multiple similar bills would have to enter the same information in many times. Also, many changes like deleting a bill can only be done through certain interfaces such as the household view and not through the household itself, which hurt both learnability and efficiency. Editing bills is made efficient by having much

Error Prevention

While hurting efficiency, deleting bills individually helps prevent errors. 

Design 2

dd

Analysis 2

Learnability

Buttons that allow users to perform actions on a bill (edit, pay, etc.) are clearly labeled and placed next to the listing for that bill. Links to other pages on the site are displayed prominently in the taskbar.

Visibility 

Information about users and households is visible in sidebar. The other pages the user can view (user details, calendar, etc.) are listed in the taskbar at the top of the page. On the pages that list bills and show how much money the user owes, lines of data can be expanded to show further details, but by default they are collapsed to maintain visual simplicity. Clickable links are underlined; the user's current page is highlighted in the taskbar.

Efficiency

Users can find a bill from the user page, the bill listing page, or the calendar.

Error Prevention

Not great. Does not allow user to undo transactions, although before a transaction goes through the user must review a confirmation page.

Design 3

dd

Analysis 3

Learnability

dd

Visibility

d

Efficiency

dd

Error Prevention

dd