Designs
Far View (day 1)
Home Page, close up (day 2)
Story Page, with user logged in, close up (day 2)
Login Dialog (days 1 and 2)
We choose to use a design similar to that presented third in GR2. However, following our TA's advice, we attempted to simplify the design as much as possible. The first day of testing indicated that our design had button placed and labeled in a confusing manner. Believing that that was the main concern, our second design was very similar, but with altered names and placement of the buttons. The second day's feedback caused us to realize that while the previous problems had been fixed, the layout was not intuitive to the users, and we now believe that a sidebar may not be the best design for our site. As such, we will be reworking our design thoroughly for the computer prototype. Our new ideas are described briefly in the last section of the page.
Briefing
We aim to construct an online interface for authors to easily collaborate on and share original and fan fiction. The target users are amateur writers who want to work together, mostly for fun, but sometimes also to improve their writing. Collaboration is a major component of the site, with various authors having the ability to append sections to a single story. Each story has one or more moderators, who are responsible for adding and removing authors, and deleting any abusive comments.
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- We moved the 'Save' button to the bottom of the new story creation screen.
New Design
Based on the feedback we received from users, and our own difficulties with the use of tabs or other breadcrumbs, we decided that since our site has two basic tasks (finding stories and reading/writing stories), that sort of continuous search functionality was not well suited to Round Robin Fiction. We instead are considering a simple horizontal split screen, with the small top section remaining unchanged throughout the entire website, giving easy access to the home page by clicking on the title/logo or searching for a new story.
We also considered that while some stories and authors will be best served by being restricted to the ability to only append to the story, others will want to have access to the entire work. With that in mind, we provide two options for users with power to do both: "Append" and "Edit". In the case of "Edit," the entire story page will become editable. In the case of "Append," a text box will be provided floating about the text, as tested with the paper prototype. The user can then see all of the previous text as she composes the newest section.
Below are new design sketches of the home page and the story page:
