Scenario
Jane is the mother of two sons, Bob and Steve. After hearing of underwater basket weaving and its potential to become the next Olympic sport, Bob asks to be enrolled in a class at the nearest pool, located approximately 30 miles away. Recognizing her young son’s promise in the sport, Jane agrees.
At the beginning of the first class, the instructor welcomes the students and their parents. She mentions GetYoRide.com as a tool to facilitate carpooling. A single mother of two, Jane is extremely busy and is interested in working with other parents to take Bob to class. Thus, Jane visits GetYoRide.com and signs up for an account. After signing up, submitting her address, and entering other contact information, she searches for Bob’s underwater basket weaving class and adds herself as a parent looking for a carpool. Subsequently, she is able to view other parents who had also expressed their interest in carpooling for the class.
Using GetYoRide.com, Jane finds two other parents, Alyssa and Vladimir, who are interested in carpooling and live within a five mile radius of her. Alyssa seeks to minimize gas expenditures. Vladimir does not speak English fluently and has a difficult time communicating over the phone. Each parent submits their driving time preferences. Because GetYoRide.com has a simple and intuitive scheduling interface, the three parents manage to set up a carpooling schedule for future classes that ensures an equitable split of the responsibility. Before each scheduled date, the designated parent receives a friendly reminder along with a map of the carpool route.
Everything proceeds according to plan until Steve’s goldfish dies one day, tragically and unexpectedly, and Jane needs to stay home to console her mourning son. She logs on to GetYoRide.com to alert the other parents and find a replacement since she can no longer drive the children. Soon after, Vladimir responds, notifying the parents that he can take the children in place of Jane. Jane successfully swaps days with Vladimir.
Sketches and Storyboards
Design 1: Efficient
Design 1 provides maximum efficiency.
Design 2: Illustrative
Design 2 takes an illustrative approach, catering towards those who are illiterate or have poor English skills.
Design 3: Mobile
Design 3 tackles non-computer interfaces, specifically mobile phones.
Analysis
Design 1: Efficient
- Pros** Efficiency: The design allows the user to get started very quickly by immediately typing in the event they are looking for upon arriving to site.
- Efficiency: All of the steps needed to go from searching for an event to seeing who else wants to carpool for that event occur within one page.
- Efficiency: Minimal investment is required since signing in or signing up is only requested after the user has found the event that for which they want to carpool.
- Efficiency: The tab structure allows the user to quickly switch between different tasks.
- Cons** Learnability: Some users may not understand what the various UI input fields are asking for since the design lacks dense descriptions or pictures.
- Learnability: With so many options in one place to promote efficiency, beginners may not find the UI intuitive.
- Safety: Since the form does not use multiple pages, the users will lose all of their entered information if they accidentally press the back button.
Design 2
Learnability
- test