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Meet Ashton, he is a professional actor and a dashing and , smart young fellow. Ashton is often travelling and has a strict schedule, but loves learning. So even though he would love to attend university classes because of his career he is unable to do so. Being that it is the 21st century everywhere Ashton goes he has his Macbook Air with him along with a wifi connection, and so online courses are perfect for him. He runs a google search for "online courses", he stumbles upon such sites as Coursera, MIT EdX, and a handful of others. He sees lots of potentially interesting courses but does not know where to start and doesn't have a lot of time to sort through all the details of the courses. Not only this, because of his strict schedule he has very specific requirements for the course: < 7 hours of work per week, intermediate difficulty, few assignments, and lots of networking opportunities. There is no information about this, and he is mad and disheartened.... until he comes across rethinkED, champagne falls from the heavens and velvet ropes part. From the first screen he sees a very visual and intuitive representation of each course, with ratings based on content, instructor, and community. He types in a search for photography, a search results page shows. He then filters on time commitment, then difficulty, and finally settles upon a course with a high community rating. He selects the course and sees a intuitive video introduction by the professor, and some brief reviews. He decides he doesn't like the instructors accent, goes back to the search results and chooses the second highest rated course. He again selects it, sees the video introduction, reads some reviews and ratings, finally checks out the forum, finally he knows this is the right course for him, is super exited and begins learning more about photography amidst his busy schedule.
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This UI is designed for small screens (mobile phones). The UI takes advantage of the smartphone’s touch interface for easy navigation through the app, and presents the reviews in an efficient manner, again with the option of advanced search criteria.
2.3 Design Group 3
1 -
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Visual
The UI is focussed on making the website more interactivevisual. The focus of the design are the reviews and comments following the reviews. It is easily learnable, and efficient for users who would prefer reading reviews and comments from other users much more than review summaries in terms of scores and stars.
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lies in the visual representation of the courses. The eye is directly brought to the images of the courses and the course ratings. Then when they hover over a course with their mouse, it will cycle through images in the courses and people can get a nice feel for the course. This interface is very intuitive and learnable, and also efficient for getting a quick over-view of courses. Then, if you want to go into more depth you can use the search and browse features which take you dynamically to another page.
2 - Video Intro
The UI is meant for efficient users who would like to see a snapshot of several courses at once, modify the search criteria, and get a sense of what the course is about via the course description. A highlight of this UI is the Compare option that allows users to compare several courses together.when the site is new, and people don't know quite what to expect yet.
3 - Mobile
This UI is designed for small screens (mobile phones). The UI takes advantage of the smartphone’s touch interface for easy navigation through the app, and presents the reviews in an efficient manner, again with the option of advanced search criteria.