GR2 - Designs
1. Scenario
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.
2. Designs and Storyboards
2.1 Design Group 1
1 - Ultra Efficient
Our user analysis indicated that most users are interested in getting the reviews the fastest way possible. They want to see the ratings of a lot of classes at once so that they can compare different courses. Efficient users would like the option of an advanced search to filter the results.
2 - Rating
When a user clicks on a particular review to see it in more detail, the following page comes up. The page shows a quick summary of the review along with similar courses and prerequisites. A forum to discuss the course and the review is an important element of this design. Moreover, this design is also more friendly towards sharing the review by providing social media share buttons. The UI is easily learnable by all users.
3 - Survey
This design uses a tiled approach to show the reviews. When a user clicks on a review to rate, a dialog box asking for the users feedback pops up. This is one of the possible designs to collect user data that may be combined with the other UIs. While a tiled pattern is easy to learn, it is less efficient than the first design.
2.2 Design Group 2
1 - Discussion
The UI is focussed on making the website more interactive. 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.
2 - Rows
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.
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.
2.3 Design Group 3
1 - Discussion
The UI is focussed on making the website more interactive. 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.
2 - Rows
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.
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.