Image 1. This is the homepage for deskdash. When Ben Bitdiddle tells Alyssa he's here to pick up a package, Alyssa will click on the "packages" button.
Image 2. This page will appear after Alyssa clicks on "packages" on the home screen. On this page Alyssa can either search through all the packages in the system or she can type package information into the search bar. This search bar will only return packages whose database entries match the search criteria (it won't return items or keys like the universal search on the home page). Alyssa could type in "Ben Bitdidle", the package tracking ID, or anything else associated with the package. In this case, since there are only 3 packages in the entire system. Alyssa simply clicks on the box in the "check out" column for Ben's package.
Image 3. After Alyssa clicks "check out", the screen updates to show that Ben's package is no longer in the system. An "undo" button appears at the bottom of the screen. The button will remain there for 4 seconds. If Alyssa presses the button, the screen will update to be the previous screen. However, Alyssa has correctly checked out Ben's package and is not going to press the "undo" button.
Analysis:
This design was revised according to comments and feedback received in class.
Image 1 was redrawn so that only the important buttons are present. Students in recitation criticized the original design's number of buttons and the fact that they were all equally sized although only a fixed set of buttons will be used 90% of the time. In this design only the critical features appear on the home page.
Image 2/3 were redrawn to include a "location" column instead of a "bin" column because not every dorm uses bins to sort packages--some do not sort them at all.
Students in class suggested adding ", etc" to the list of search suggestions to be displayed in the search bar before a user types anything. This will make it clearer that the text in the search bar is a suggestion--not a requirement.
Learnability: This design is very learnable because it's very explicit. It's obvious that if you want to do anything involving packages, you should click on "packages" in image 1. The button icons also make the button functionalities explicit. In addition, users can type anything into the search bar, so if a user doen't know where to look for "pool sticks", they can type it into the search bar and the database entry for "pool sticks" will pop up.
Efficiency: This design is not as efficient as it could be because it requires a lot of clicks to get where you want to go. Having a homepage means the user will have to click an extra time to get from the homepage to whatever page they want to be on. Once on the packages page, users must use move their hands to the keyboard, type in package information, and then go back to the mouse to click the "check out" button.
Safety: blah