Storyboarding
Jenny is a 30 year old woman who predominantly works from home. She takes care of two young children and is the primary source of caregiving in her household. Her children frequently demand various recipes from her that require her to have a fully stocked but not always well organized kitchen. Jenny has frequently accidentally bought materials she already has for recipes, or forgotten that there are ingredients in her kitchen and let them expire.
With collector’s catalogue, however, Jenny can remember of every ingredient and material in her pantry. Jenny takes pictures and labels (or has the application intelligently label) each ingredient and item. The first time she installed and used the application, she took a long time because she needed to catalogue so many things in her kitchen. Now each item takes very little time to insert into her catalogue, and she does it naturally every time she adds something to her kitchen.
Furthermore, Jenny realises that while most of her ingredients are at home, she can often recall locations of specific ingredients (like where to buy it the cheapest) using the collector’s catalogue’s built in location management. Collector’s Catalogue by default geotags each photo, and if she catalogues while she is in the store she can remember important details like where the store is and how much it cost at some particular location. This, too, takes little time for her to accomplish.
Jenny finds that she can enlist her husband and children for help in cataloguing their kitchen. Collector’s Catalogue’s ability to allow groups manage inventories means that she doesn’t need to be present when her husband does the groceries. Her family can help track their inventory
Jenny also finds a social side to her cataloging of items. With her children, Jenny can show them what’s available in her pantry so that they can get ideas of what to make based off whats currently in the kitchen. Jenny can show images of ingredients to her friends to show them what she uses in certain recipes. These are social situations that give Jenny the choice to show and share her inventory without allowing external users to edit it.
Designs
Design #1 (Thomas) - DesignThomas1.pdf
Application: Jenny starts at the Main screen. If this is her first time, she can click the +Collections button to bring her to the Create/Update Collection - otherwise she can just click on one of the collections she has already created. Once she hits the save button, she will be brought to the Review Collection screen, at which point she can branch off into several options. (a) She can click edit to bring her back* to the *Create/Update Collection screen. (b) She can click new photo to bring her to the Take Photo screen (more on this to follow). (c) She can click scrapbook to bring her to the Create/Update Scrapbook screen. (d) She can click on individual items to bring her to that item's Create/Update Item, or Review Item screen. In this scenario, she wants to add ingredients into her collection, she she will click on the new photo button to bring her to the Take Photo screen. Once she takes the photo, she then confirms the photo and is taken to the Create/Update Item screen, where she can edit information such as the price, and name. From here, she clicks the save button and that item is added to the collection she chose/created earlier, and she is brought automatically to the View Collection screen. Now Jenny wants to share this collection with her family! She can do this in two ways. Either she can go to her Friends page from the main screen, or go to the specific collection's Review Collection screen. From the friends screen, she can choose a friend (or a group of friends) and then a collection to share with them. From the specific collection's screen, she can click share and then choose friends to share the scrapbook with. Now her family can help her add ingredients to the collection! Now Jenny wants to share recipes with her old lady mom friends. She can do this by making a new Scrapbook! To do this, she can either click New Scrapbook on the Main screen, or Scrapbook on the Review Collection screen. Either of these will bring her to the Create/Update Scrapbook screen. Once she edits it and saves it, she can share it with her friends similar to how she shared the collection!
Application: From Main Screen, click +Collection to go to the New Collection Screen, filling in Name (Food), being taken to the Food Collection Screen. For each item added, Jenny selects New Photo, taken to the Photo Screen, to the Tagging Screen, where she adds tag info, taking her back to the Food Collection Screen. To add group management options, Jenny starts from the Food Collection Screen, selects Edit to go to a screen similar to the New Collection Screen, where she adds privacy/sharing information before being taken back to Food Collection Screen. To show collection with kids, Jenny can either stay and browse in Food Collection Screen, or select Scrapbook, showing a specialized gallery to present to the kids so they can browse for themselves.
Usability Analysis
Learnability - This design has okay (but not great) learnability. It's pros are that it has very similar structures for Creating/Updating or Reviewing an Item/Collection/Scrapbook. This means that if you can learn how to make a new Collection, making a new Item will be very easy to learn as well. Additionally, most of the pages are fairly simple (for example, the Create Photo page will only have a Save button (and maybe a back button or something too)). The main cons are that the Main Page and View Collection pages are fairly cluttered. This problem in particular shouldn't be too hard to fix by tweaking the story board a bit.
Efficiency - Efficiency for this task could be improved. The main task (the only one that matters for efficiency, since it's the only one you'll be performing a lot) is taking photos/editing details. Currently, this takes one click to get to the New Photo screen, one click to take the photo, one click to confirm the photo, a bunch of typing to edit the information, then another click to save it. If there were some way to cut this down/help automate the process, that would be great. As far as other aspects of this storyboard are concerned, the efficiency is decent (i.e. you can go directly to and edit page instead of the view page when you are selecting an item/collection).
Safety - Anytime you edit a photo, or collection, if you save bad changes, you can just edit again and fix the errors, so from this aspect it is fairly safe. There currently isn't an option in the story board for deletion, but I was thinking of having a garbage can icon you could drag items to (to delete them), and click it to see items you've deleted (to be able to undelete them). This would also be fairly safe. When you take a photo, you have to confirm it first, so taking a bad photo is not a problem! (You just retake it). Overall, this design is very safe.
Design #2 (Victoria) - DesignVictoria2.pdf - Previous Iteration: DesignVictoria1.pdf
Application: The Main Screen allows browsing of collections, and turning an unused slot into a new collection. The Collection screen allows for browsing of photos, and adding a new photo. Any selection of a photo/new photo goes to the item screen, where a photo can be viewed/added, and information added/updated. Settings information screen can be accessed from the Collection screen, allowing group management/sharing. The collection screen also doubles to allow gallery-like viewing of items.
Usability Analysis
Learnability - Very easy to learn - The design is very simplistic, the main screen instantly shows you what collections you have, as well as presents the button to create a new collection. The app hides most of the work for you. Images serve the dual purpose of displaying the item visually, as well as showing a bit of tag info and being a button to go down in the item-collection hierarchy. Any advanced features are hidden, and the settings access from the collection page has external consistency with other apps where the settings are either able to be swiped from the bottom or from the android settings button. An individual item page clearly shows where an image can be taken, as well as tags added. With the few screens to complicate the design, the design also shows a bit of internal consistency, being very visual and gallery-like throughout the design.
Efficiency - The design is efficient for low numbers of collections/items, but has no obvious way to narrow down or filter things from the gallery views. Besides that there is no way to speed up tagging yet, or any shortcuts to different areas of the design. The design doesn't discriminate currently between least-recently-accessed items/collections and frequently-used items, etc, so though the design is very learnable, there is not much of a chance to speed up the process once you learn it.
Safety - If you take a bad photo, you're still in the item screen and can retake it. Tags can be added and deleted. The ability to erase/delete a collection/item is not clear.
Design #3 (Benjamin) - DesignBen2.pdf, DesignGroups.pdf - Previous Iteration: DesignBen1.pdf
Application: When Jenny starts using collector's catalogue for the first time, she encounters the main screen, she is presented with the option to take a picture, browse collections, or start a new collection. Clicking on new collection, Jenny is taken to a new screen where she can set up her new collection. Not needing much, she only inputs the name "Food" and is then taken to the "Food" collection screen. She begins to take pictures of foods and ingredients she already has in stock, adding some brief tags to each picture. Sometimes the food item is automatically recognized, lightening the initial work Jenny has to do. During this process she realizes she can tag using voice recognition from the same screen. Eventually she finished, and now only has to add a few items every so often, by selecting Take Photo from the main screen and adding directly to the food collection. At first Jenny only inputs basic information like item name, but eventually starts inputting more like expiration date, price, location obtained, etc.
(In DesignGroups.pdf) To add group management options, she navigates to the Food Collection page, goes to the settings, and enables some basic group sharing functionality, so now her husband can access and update the same collection information from his phone. The group management screen allows her to type up emails/contacts to share with, or scrolling through a list of her contacts to select multiple. Her husband can either access and accept a collection invitation from email, or from application in the collections screen (as a android drop down notification NEW COLLECTION INVITE). The Collection settings allows either person to see what sharing options/privileges are available.
From the Food collection screen, Jenny can show a gallery of food items to her children, with search filters to narrow down the gallery selection.
Usability Analysis
Learnability - Very easy to learn - The design is very simplistic (only two real buttons on the main screen), and the app does most of the work for you (auto tagging, voice recognition). The buttons on the collection screen are very clear - Share, Add Photo, etc. The only part that might be difficult to learn is the PIC-LOCATION-SPECIFIC TAGS PART, which is a particularly advanced power user feature. The design uses a visual gallery approach, borrowing some external consistency from applications like windows explorer and a few photo browsing applications, as well as the method of browsing apps in android. Advanced features are safely accessible from settings (for now), which power users can access looking for new options (additional learnability in implementation). The Sharing aspect of the design does not have as much external consistency to borrow, but the idea of either adding to a list from a typing textfield or selecting from a scrollable area/table/list of google contacts, both are accessible and easily usable.
Efficiency - Assuming the auto-tagger, voice recognition works, this design is extremely efficient! The main task, adding items to a collection, is done in just a few clicks - taking the picture, and saving the tags. Getting to a specific collection takes an additional couple clicks, but this is necessary to simplify the learnability/look of the main screen. Most of the other infrequent tasks can be done fairly easily too (sharing a collection, creating a new collection (From the Main Screen, or from the collections browsing screen). In many use cases a collection or an item may be more quickly accessed through shortcuts or most-recently/frequently-used hotlists. In a worst case scenario, though, random access might take 6-7 clicks to reach from one item screen to another.
Safety - This design is fairly safe - if you ever mistag an item, or input the wrong info, you can always go back and edit it later. Mistags might not be very efficiently processed however. If you take a bad photo, you can retake it from the same screen, screen shown similar to AlternateCamera.pdf. There's not a clear way to delete an item/collection currently, if one accidentally chooses such an action. Location specific tags don't have a clear way of disposal. Search filters can be changed easily.
1 Comment
Sacha Zyto
Overall: great ""point and shoot"" feature. Nice that you put your previous iteration.