Scenario: Start playing a round of bridge
Steps:
- Four users agree to play bridge. The teams are Harrison and Tuan vs Jack and David.
- All four users sit down at a table, in clockwise order: Harrison, Jack, Tuan, David.
- Harrison is randomly chosen to be the dealer. He sets the deck to be a standard 52-card deck and shuffles it.
- Harrison distributes 13 cards to each player's hand.
- After all cards have been dealt, person to left of dealer (Jack) begins bidding process.
- Tuan calls 1 spade. David calls 2 clubs. Harrison passes. Jack passes. Tuan calls 2 spades. Everyone passes after that. The contract is 2 spades.
- Harrison is the dummy.
- David starts with ace of clubs.
- Harrison lays down his hand face up for all to see. Tuan plays the 3 of clubs from the dummy's hand.
- Jack plays the 7 of clubs.
- Tuan trumps with the 2 of spades.
- Tuan wins round, takes trick, and play continues.
Design A:
Storyboard
- Steps 1-3: Initialization
- Steps 4-6: Bidding
- Steps 7-11: Playing
Learnability
- pros: affordances for highlighting selection
- cons: user must discover actions by experimentation
Efficiency
- pros: very efficient, types of clicks map to set actions (ie single click selects top, double click all)
- cons: natural constraints on actions (ie pick random card from deck)
Visibility
- pros: staggered stack, names are color coded to distinguish user specific selection user color on cards played will fade over time
- cons: user must discover some options
Errors
- pros: no need for undo - easy to fix with next action
- cons: may be hard to select certain cards
Design B
Storyboard
- Steps 1-4: Dealing
- Steps 5-6: Bidding
- Step 7: Group Select
- Scenes 8-12: Stackify
Usability Analysis
Learnability
- pros: options are made visible via circular pop up
- cons: terminology (ie. stackify)
Efficiency
- pros: dealer privileges might speed up big actions via buttons
- cons: making large stacks is tedious (lots of clicks)
Visibility
- pros:** mouse cursor changing to express object interaction** stack size numbers attached to each stack** glowing card selection
- cons: hard to tell owner of last played card
Errors
- pros:
- cons: hard to correct mispressed card for stacking
Design C
Storyboard
- Steps 5-6: Bidding
- Steps 8-12: Collecting
Usability Analysis
Learnability
- pros: very simple,
- cons: no notion of hands, actions must be discovered
Efficiency
- pros: hotkeys to select card and mode
- cons: all players must unanimously vote to approve global modes
Visibility
- pros: right click shows drop down menu of options
- cons: display of card is universal
Errors
- pros: all actions are easily undo-able
- cons: lots of selection errors but easy to undo. mode errors likely but undo-able