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Safety: This design is safe in that errors are recoverable. If the user selects the wrong item, he or she can close the window. The users are also few since most of the time the user knows exactly what he or she is picking because it is specified in the picture and text.
Design 2
Task 1: Selecting a RestaurantDesign Selection: GPS
Anand arrives at Cinderella’s and opens up menu.io in order to see the menu. The app presents him with 3 different options: Cinderella’s, Toscanini’s, and Desi Dhaba. These options are found through the GPS feature of Anand’s phone. These are the closest restaurants that use menu.io, based on Anand’s current location. He selects Cinderella’s, and sits down to view the menu that the app has generated for him.Design Selection: GPSDesign Selection: GPSAnand arrives at Cinderella’s and opens up menu.io in order to see the menu. The app presents him with 3 different options: Cinderella’s, Toscanini’s, and Desi Dhaba. These options are found through the GPS feature of Anand’s phone. These are the closest restaurants that use menu.io, based on Anand’s current location. He selects Cinderella’s, and sits down to view the menu that the app has generated for him.Learnability: GPS is very learnable. The app does most of the heavy lifting for the user, and the user only has to choose the restaurant of his/her choice when it shows up.Efficiency: This design is efficient because it makes sure the user only has to take 1 action: choosing the restaurant. Nothing has to be typed up or searched, and GPS can be selected immediately. The only efficiency issue arises when the wanted restaurant is not shown in the list to the user, which will be discussed in the Safety section.Safety: This design is not very safe, especially if there are GPS issues with the phone. This requires users to type in the restaurant that they are eating at, which causes an efficiency issue.
Task 2: Viewing the Menu
Design Selection: Icons on top with details in the center.
The app presents Anand with a row of icons at the top of the screen. He can scroll back and forth between items and the center item is reflected in a larger detail view in the center of the screen. He is able to see a picture of the item along with price, details, and ingredients. Presented with all this information, Anand is able to make a much more educated choice about what he wants to eat.
Learnability: This design is fairly learnable because of the scrolling elements of the icon bar. Most of the features of these menus will be made obvious to users, so there is no learning necessary here.
Efficiency: It is easy to move from dish to dish on the menu, but there is no natural sorting to make it easy to move to a dish of one’s choice quickly. This is where filters (Task 3) come in.
Safety: There is not very much room for error here. If a user scrolls past an item of his/her choice, it is very easy for the user to scroll back to the desired item, making this design safe.
Task 3: Filtering the Menu
Design Section: Drag filters to menu
Anand wants to filter the menu to only show vegetarian dishes, because he is vegetarian. The filters are shown on the bottom of the screen, and he drags the vegetarian filter onto his menu view, and all of the non-vegetarian dishes disappear. He also knows he wants to eat pasta, so he drags the pasta filter onto his menu. If Anand ever wishes to remove one of the filters he has placed on his menu, he could click the corresponding filter on a new dialog that has opened on the top of the screen.
Learnability: The drag-to-filter design might pose a learnability issue for new users. It is not made obvious that filters are meant to be dragged to the menu, and users might consider interacting with them in other ways (clicking, for example) to add them to the menu. This can be remedied by having multiple methods of applying a filter with the same design.
Efficiency: This is a very efficient method of applying filters. It requires a simple click or drag, and the filter is applied immediately.
Safety: This design is fairly safe. If a wrong filter is applied, it is made obvious how to remove it, and removal of said filter is done almost instantaneously.