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It's Monday morning and Jack just realized that he has been meaning to have lunch with Kate and Bill for a while and they haven't been able to meet up. Jack and Bill work on the same project team, so their availabilities are similar, but because Bill doesn't respond to email frequently (despite the fact that he always has his smartphone with him), Jack has had trouble trying to schedule lunch the day of with Bill. Jack has also had trouble scheduling a lunch with Kate because he doesn't know her availability. Jack would like to have lunch with Kate and Bill sometime this week, the sooner, the better. Jack is able to take a one hour lunch between noon and 2pm on every day except Thursday when he has a conference call with the San Francisco office that lasts until 1:30pm.
Kate has been out of the office the past few weeks and has fallen out of sync with Jack. She has several meetings over the week, but none during lunchtime. She is excited to catch up with Jack and Bill.
In this scenario, Jack needs to create an event and invite Kate and Bill. Kate and Bill need to respond to the event.
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The following image shows the overall walkthrough of the design.
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Figure 1 |
Figures
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Figure 2 | Figure 3 | Figure 4 | Figure 5 |
Walkthrough:
When Jack opens his mashcal to create and event he is greeted with the homescreen shown on the Figure 2. It shows him to the events he has created day by day. He can transition to the new event creation window (also on Figure 2) on from the homescreen. He can name the event and choose its type as well as invite others and pick the possible dates for the event. Upon pressing on "Pick possible dates" button he will come to Pick Dates window shown on Figure 3. The structure of the picking dates window is similar to theiphone default alarm clock interface. The Month Week and Day can be set with scrollable selectors that move up and down with a flick (Similar to alarm choosing interface). The time slots can be marked available and unavailable and after selection clicking done button brings Jack back to the event creation window. He can then select the invitees from his contact list (Shown on Figure 4). This interface is similar to iphone contact interface. He can add import contacts as well as search for them in the autocomplete search input box. He selects Bill from his contact list, however he did not previously have Kate's contact and he adds her as a new contact. By pressing the Done button he sends invitation to Kate and Bill. When Kate and Bill receive invitations, push notification will appear on their phone as shown on figure 5. They can just simply reply "I can not go" or they can choose the dates appropriate for them via the Pick Dates interface and send the reply back.
(Figure 2) 
(Figure 3) 
(Figure 4) 
( Figure 5)
Analysis:
Learnability
Good: Couple of affordances are used in the interface to improve usability. Traditional affordances like arrows and buttons are natural to the user. Their behavior is consistent with way people think about them. The "Percentage of People RSVP-d " icon communicates whether the event was for a group or just for Jack by showing many human figures or just one. That icon is filled up according to how many people reply to the invitations. The thumb icon on the Pick Date window on Figure 3 tells the user that the time slot can be selected with a touch; this communicates the model of the interface to the user effectively. Another thing that helps with the usability is that everything that user can interact with is labeled accordingly. Therefore, a user will not be wondering which part of the interface corresponds to what task.
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Other: The touch controls (swiping, scrolling, selection) are meant to be externally consistent with other applications and conventions on iOS and Android opertating systems.
Alternative Design directions
Inviting people: Aside from using an autocomplete field, it is possible to instead present a user with a list of all of their contacts as a combobox that allows multiple selection. We dislike this widget because it is not efficient for the case where users know whom to invite already. Some contacts lists my take 10s of screens on a mobile phone. It also would force the user into our mental model of presenting all contacts alphabetically where they may be thinking of them in other ways. Because of these drawbacks, we did not incorporate the combobox into our designs.