McInterface
User Interface Design & Development Project
SIMS 213, Spring 2001

: Linda Harjono, Saifon Obromsook, John Yiu Chi Wai

Summary Report | Assignments | Prototypes | Presentations | Team | Vocabulary | Workload Distribution

Scenarios, Competitive Analysis, and Preliminary Design

Scenarios

All personas have the same general goal, which is to get the food as soon as possible. From the task matrix, most of the central tasks of our personas overlaps while their frequencies and importance scores slightly differ. The main distinctions among the task characteristics of our personas are:

From the task analysis, we found that an interface that can accommodate Jeff and Karina's main tasks will also accommodate Julie's. There is one Julie's optional task that is not needed by other personas, which is to see the nutrition facts of the food. However, we decide to drop that task from the design since it has a low frequency and also low importance. Moreover, most of our interviewees do not care about nutrition facts. They reasoned that people already perceive fast food to be unhealthy anyway, so those who choose to go to fast-food restaurants usually do not care much.

For the above reasons, we decide to choose Jeff Zhou and Karina Carlos as our primary personas. We came up with five scenarios. Since our primary personas' central tasks overlap well and are not very complicated, we were able to accommodate the less common tasks into our scenarios. We apply Jeff to the first four scenarios, and Karina to the last scenario, when she has to order for a party (her children and herself). All scenarios contain one necessary task: placing the order. The other necessary and optional tasks are distributed among the five scenarios (see table below). All these scenarios are intended to apply to our main personas, although they can also apply partly to Julie Woods.

In order to allow more flexibility in doing our initial design, we will not yet define the tasks in details or determine the sequence of how the personas will do their tasks in our scenarios at this point.

1st Scenario (For the 1st timer):
"Jeff wants to get a new card and set the primary language to English. He wants to put in $30 into his new McCard, using his ATM card. Since he is very hungry, he does not want to browse the menu, but decides to go ahead and order the BigMac combo with Coke. He also requests for no pickle on his burger, and save that request permanently. Finally, he saves the order as one of his MyFavs, checks out, takes the receipt, and picks up his food."

2nd Scenario (The quickest version):
"Jeff has lots of things to do for his class projects, so he wants to buy lunch and eat it in the class lounge while having a group meeting. He orders one of his MyFavs using his McCard and takes the receipt to pick up his order."

3rd Scenario (Adding McCard value and Overwriting existing MyFav):
"Jeff uses his McCard that he purchased two weeks ago. He then realizes that he only has $0.50 left on the card, so he adds $10.00 to it. He looks at his MyFav list, but he thinks that he is now bored with them. So, he browses the special deals / new menu to see whether there is something new to try. He then decides to order the new Chicken Ranch sandwich package. In addition, thinking that the Chicken Ranch will not be enough to make him full, he also wants to order a McParfait, which he saved as his MyFav #3. Before checking, he saves the whole order as his MyFav #1. Finally, he takes his receipt that he later uses to pick up his order."

4th Scenario (Not enough McCard value and canceling an order):
"Jeff orders a Quarter Pounder combo, which was saved as his MyFav #2. However, he wants to change the drink, from Coke, to Root Beer. He then orders a McFlurry. Unfortunately, the remaining value of his McCard is not enough. So, he orders the small strawberry Milkshake instead. Still, his McCard does not have enough value to cover the whole order. Jeff then decides to add more value to his McCard. Unfortunately, he forgot to move his debit and credit cards from his other wallet to the one that he brings today. Having no other choice, Jeff cancels the whole order and goes to the cashier."

5th Scenario (Different Special Request for Each Ordered Item):
"Karina orders a Quarter Pounder combo with Coke and request 'no tomatoes' on the burger. In addition, she orders two Cheeseburger Happy Meals with Sprite for her kids, one with pickles, and one without pickles. Before checking out, Alex said that he wants to have Root Beer instead of Sprite. After changing the drink for Alex's Happy Meal, Karina checks out, takes the receipt, and picks up her order."

Here is the distribution of different tasks into our four scenarios:

Tasks
Scenarios
Necessary   
Buy Card 1
Set the primary language 1
Browse to decide what to order 3
Place an order  1,2,3,4,5
Take receipt 1,2,3,5
Add the card's value 3,4
Optional   
Special Request 1,5
Save special request permanently 1
Make changes to an unconfirmed order 4,5
Cancel an order 4
Save an order as a MyFav 1,3

Next: Competitive Analysis