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When Kevin first visits the website, he finds the home page displaying a list of the upcoming games in his city. He can change the city, filter games, search for games of a particular property (eg. keyword, organizer, date, time, location, rank) via a dropdown list, and sort the games by similar properties via a dropdown list. He can click see more for more games to append themselves to the games list. Because he does not have an account, he cannot see details of the games. Kevin can log in or register to gain more access to the system.
Kevin clicks on the register button and is presented with the registration page. He fills out the information required and creates his account. The information will populate his public profile.
After registration, Kevin is met with his home page. It is similar to the one when he hadn’t logged in, except this time he can see game details and join/leave games. In addition, on the right side of the pane Kevin is presented with a list of his game schedule and buddy activities. At this point, these lists are still blank. There is a Create Game button on the pane that allows easy access to game creation. On the top right corner of the page, Kevin’s icon picture, name, rank, and location are displayed. If Kevin presses the drop-down arrow next to his name, he will be presented with options to go to his Profile, Account Settings, and Logout.
Meanwhile, George is logged in to his own account and is creating a new game. The location field provides auto-completion. When he chooses a date, he can click on the calendar icon and a mini-calendar shows up under the arrow. George can then click on a date in the calendar to set the field. When he gets to the Court field, he can click on the question mark for more information. A window will pop up showing the basketball courts configuration of the particular gym as well as their associated numbers so that players know which court to meet at. When George wants to edit a game, a page similar to the Create Game page will appear.
Notice that while George creates his game, his right side pane has not changed from the home page’s right side pane. Because George has many games on his schedule and many buddy activities, he can choose to see more, in which case the ride side pane will extend longer to accommodate more entries.
He can easily leave and edit games under his schedule as indicated by the icons and words. Clicking on a game overview entry will redirect George to that game’s details page. Hovering over entries with an arrow on the right side pane will produce a glow on that entry. Similarly, hovering on game entries in the main pane will make that entry glow.
Kevin searches games by location for games that are only in the z-center. Because he has free time on Thursday nights, he decides to use the filter function to filter down the search results to Thursday nights with George Karl as the organizer. He clicks on the filter link and a box appears over the main window. Kevin chooses the choices he desires. When he clicks OK, the filter applies the changes. If he clicked the X on the top right corner of the box, the changes would have been canceled.
The filtered result gave Kevin one game. He decides to click on the game details to learn more. The page includes information about the game, as well as a Join button for Kevin to easily join. When he clicks on join, a dropdown list presents him with options to join as a player, referee, casual interloper, or observer. After Kevin clicks one of the options, the Leave button will replace the Join button. The right side pane changes to a list of all the participants of the game. Clicking on a participant entry will send Kevin to that person’s profile page.
After joining the game, Kevin decides to look at George’s profile. He clicks on George’s name in the games list and comes across Geroge’s profile page. The profile page includes George’s personal information as well as a list of his future games and past games. Near George’s name is an Add Buddy button which Kevin clicks. (Side note: When Kevin views his own profile, the Edit Profile button replaces the Add Buddy button). The right side pane displays all of George’s buddies. Clicking on a buddy will redirect Kevin to that buddy’s profile page.
Analysis
Good Points:
- Information is presented in a simple manner on the homepage.
- The design provides commonly-seen affordances such as glow-on-mouse-hover for entries in lists, buttons, icons with links (join, leave), drop-down arrows, and side-arrows that indicate “details”
- Joining and leaving games require very little clicks, making the design efficient for these tasks.
- Creating a game is efficient when on the homepage.
- Design allows for searching and filtering.
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The boxes on the home page make the games very visible. Given that the core functionality of the site is to connect players with games that they would be interested in, this design decision makes sense. The parameters are laid out logically to enable good learnability. If we use javascript on the filter selections, then the user would be able to figure out the implications of each option with great immediacy. However, some efficiency is sacrificed with the design. Many games cannot be viewed at once when the games take up large screen area. It wouldn't make sense from a speed standpoint to load all available games at once so a button must be clicked to display additional games. An expert user might rather have a large list of games without the box interface to assimilate more information quickly. The drop downs on the time option and the slide bars on the skill range will help limit error prevention. If we can implement a standard list of valid locations we can also do some error prevention on the location criterion.
Design 3
This design uses simple lists to display all the information. This design mostly relies on text to convey the information. Lists are sortable, and the list of games is searchable through filters.
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