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Our scenario builds off of our persona, Aly, from GR1. Aly is an MIT sophomore who has a flight home to Florida at the end of the semester, on May 17th at 6 AM. She always buys cheap flights, which often leave in the early morning before the public transportation system operates, as is the case for this particular flight, so she wishes to take a cab to the airport. Aly uses RideShare to find people to share a cab with her for this flight. The tasks she needs to perform are:
- Search for a ride share
- Post a new RideShare listing for her desired time and destination
- Invite friends to see her RideShare post
Designs
Design 1
Design 2
The main feature of this design is that it consists of only one page. When a user clicks the buttons to navigate through the website, different sections of the page will pop up and disappear, but the user never leaves the home page of the website.
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Now Aly is done and she returns to the homepage of RideShare. When another user is interested in sharing a ride with her, she'll be notified through her email.
Analysis
Pros:
- Having all the main features on a single webpage greatly increases visibility. Users do not have to navigate around to find the things they need. It also increases efficiency by decreasing loading time because the user only loads a section of the page every time they perform a new function.
- Asking the user to provide MIT certificate when they enter the website let the website identify them immediately. For instance, when the user opens the site, the page can notify the user immediately if someone is interested in sharing a ride with them.
- The "Recent Activities" section increases the learnability of the website and helps users advertise their ride posting, as has been explained in the Story Board section.
- The auto-completion feature increases efficiency and prevents typing errors.
Cons:
- Asking users to provide certificate when they enter the website may turn them away, especially if they don't have the certificate installed in the computer they are using.
- This single-page design may be more challenging to implement than the designs that uses multiple pages.
- The "Recent Activities" section may discourage users from using the website when there are not many active users. It may be a good idea to add the feature only after the website has many users.
- Specifying a range (±1 mile for location or ±30 minutes for time, etc) when a user fills in the "Find a Ride" or "Post a Ride" form reduces efficiency and may not be necessary. The task should be performed automatically by the website.
Design 3
Storyboard
Aly navigates to the RideShare homepage. On this page, she types in all of the details to look for her desired ride ("Destination: Logan Airport, Start location: MIT, Date: May 17, Time 4AM. When she clicks submit, the browser-specific certificate request pops up so that RideShare can automatically log her into the system, and the search results page appears.
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