Assignment 3: Scenarios, Competitive Analysis, and Initial Design

Project Vocabulary (separate page)
Scenarios
Revisions to Personas and Tasks
Competitive Analysis
Initial Design Ideas
Final Task Flow
Work Distribution (separate page)

I. Scenarios

Scenario 1: Buying a Used Textbook
Persona: Steve Patel

It’s the first week of classes; Steve has already confirmed his schedule. He hasn’t done any readings yet. He has an assignment due next week, and he knows he’s running out of time. Because he has family responsibilities, he has minimal time for lengthy visits to campus bookstores, and no one is at home to sign for UPS packages. He approaches BESS with a specific intent to buy all textbooks required for his SIMS 213 course. He is also looking for another book, recommended by Marti, which is on the recommended book list. Directly after class, he visits the SIMS upstairs lab, says hello to Roberta, and logs into a workstation. He doesn’t remember BESS’s exact URL, so he goes to the Simians page and finds the link. When he reaches BESS’s homepage, he searches for the required books for 213. For each required book, he contacts the seller to arrange a face to face meeting to exchange goods. Now that Steve has found his two required books, he searches for the recommended book. He then contacts the seller of that book for a face to face meeting to exchange goods.

Scenario 2: Browsing for Textbooks
Persona: Sarah McClintock

It’s the beginning of the Spring semester, and Sarah is trying to decide whether to take an additional course. She’s also trying to decide between two other courses. She wants to take a course that has a light workload and won’t cost too much money. Sarah uses the downstairs lab to browse the site while she eats lunch. Before she visits BESS, she compares both online and campus bookstore prices. Then she visits BESS and compares prices with those she’s already collected from online and campus bookstores. To do this, she sorts the books on BESS by price. She reads the reviews for each book, if available. With all informatiow now in hand, she decides on her class schedule. She sees one book she needs for her classes but can’t find another. She contacts the seller for the book she can find to set up a face to face meeting to exchange goods. She then requests that the system notify her when the other book is posted for sale.

Scenario 3: Selling Textbooks
Persona: Yvonne Mallory-Carter

It’s the second semester of Yvonne’s final year at SIMS, and she wants to sell all her books except the ones related to user interface design. It’s important for her to sell her books as quickly as possible because she doesn’t want to move them into her new apartment in Mountain View. She has a total of 13 books to sell, and she wants to use BESS in order to help fellow Simians. From her apartment in Rockridge, she boots up her laptop and connects to the Internet via modem. From the SIMS homepage, she finds BESS. The books that she wants to post are in a pile next to her laptop. For each book, she enters the identifying information. She describes the book attributes, such as physical condition, and requested price. Since she is in a hurry to sell her books, she notes that the prices are flexible. She also assigns the book to a general subject category. For five of the thirteen books, she writes a short review and additional comments. Finally, she enters her contact information, posts the books, and turns off her computer. Unfortunately, that night, she spills a mug of glogg on Messerschmidt’s book, which she has posted for sale on BESS in "excellent condition." Since she is an honest person, she returns to BESS the next day, finds the Messerschmidt book that she posted, and changes the book condition from "excellent" to "fair."

Scenario 4: Adding Book Lists and Editing Reviews
Persona: Oliver Wang

It’s the end of the first semester, and Oliver has received the required book lists for every course that is being offered the next semester. People have already started complaining that BESS isn’t updated. He logs into BESS as the system administrator. He adds a new semester to the system, inputting the course numbers and the required book list for each course. Meanwhile, he sees that someone had written "Messerschmidt sucks" in a book review, and since Messerschmidt is affiliated with SIMS, he decides to delete the offensive review. Two weeks into the new semester, one of the courses gets cancelled because the instructor went on sabbatical. So he logs into BESS and deletes the course and corresponding required book list in BESS. He hopes he doesn’t have to visit BESS again until the end of the semester.

II. Revisions to Personas and Tasks

We thought about Marti's suggestion that we might develop a persona who would both buy and sell. This is a good suggestion. However, after discussion, we decided to keep our personas as they stand. Right now, we have one persona per primary function (buy, browse, sell, administer), and we feel this is the correct number on which to focus our design efforts. However, this suggestion has brought to our attention the importance of easy movement between different site interfaces/functions, and we will design our site accordingly.

We need to add some functions to our task description. We decided that sellers (but not buyers) will need to set up a login and password so they can enter the system later to modify or delete their postings. Accordingly, these two tasks will be added:

• Set up seller's account - Persona: Yvonne, once
• Log in to modify account postings or clean-up listings - Personas: Yvonne, Oliver, occasional use

III. Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis #1: Classbook.com

Description
Classbook.com allows customers to buy and sell used textbooks. Customers find books by searching by title, author, or ISBN. Then they place the book in a shopping cart, just as in other online booksellers. Transactions are fulfilled via credit card. To sell used textbooks, customers print an invoice and snail mail their books to Classbook.com. If the books are satisfactory, the company mails a check to the customer.

Neat Features
Classbook.com has a simple but powerful search engine. Users can search in three categories: title, author, or ISBN, and in three levels of specificity: exact word match, "starts with" match, or "contains" match. If multiple books are found with the same keyword, Classbook.com lists all the results found in a table. Each search result lists important book information - book title, ISBN, author, and edition. The shopping cart model is very intuitive and users can easily add more books from the shopping cart.

Bad Features
Classbook.com combines the buy and sell functionality with a confusing interface. When a customer finds a particular book, the system defaults to the "buy" function. To switch to the "buy back" function, the user clicks on the "Buy Back" radio button, and then clicks "Add to Cart." The use of radio buttons to switch functionality is a big GUI blooper. Classbook.com also misuses the shopping cart metaphor since a cart is used to buy things, not to sell things, yet the customer puts the book in the cart regardless of buy or sell functions.

Good aspects to incorporate in BESS

• Easy-to-use search engine
• Search books by title, author, and ISBN
• Few graphics, not too many clicks

Competitive Analysis #2: Craig's List

Description

Craig's List is a community exchange Web site that brings buyers and sellers from a geographical region together. The site does not function as a currency exchange. Buyers and sellers negociate price privately. The service is almost entirely free.

1) The text-based interface works well for this exhange site. With so many kinds of saleable items, the interface should be as stripped-down as possible. I also like being able to "jump in" to the categories I want without any intermediary pages.

2) With all these categories, though, it's good that the search box is in an obvious position in the left hand corner.

3) Search also gives standard keyword categories to refine search and then lets the user insert more specific terms. This gives the searcher some guidance on the site's range and eliminates confusion that might occur with idiosyncratic references to categories. You know you're searching by "jobs" instead of "careers."

4) Default sorts to the latest posting. This would be important for an exchange site like ours, where it's clear that the earlier the posting, the better the chance that the item has already been sold. Also important to note is that Craig's List operates mostly on a self-service mode. This would help take the burden off Oliver. Subscribers can remove their own posts instead of bugging him to do it for them.

Competitive Analysis #3: Half.com

Description
Half.com facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers of previously owned books, CDs, movies and video games. Like our proposed system, Half.com is not an auction. Instead, buyers choose to purchase a specific item based on the product’s listed condition, its listed price, and the seller’s rating. When customers “purchase” items, they give their credit card information to Half.com, who then asks the seller to ship the item. When it is has been shipped, Half.com charges the credit card. Sellers only learn buyers’ addresses; all credit card information is restricted to Half.com, which periodically sends checks to the sellers.

Neat Features
If an item you want isn’t available, you can add it to your a) Wish List, and Half.com will send you an email as soon as the item becomes available; or your b) Pre-Order list, and Half.com will automatically charge your card and have the item shipped to you as soon as the item is posted on the site. If you need the book immediately, you can use Half.com’s price comparison engine to find the best prices on Amazon.com, BN.com, etc., and then link directly to the product on these sites.

Good Aspects of This Site that We Should Incorporate in BESS:

• Wish List functionality.
• Homepage has lots of information at a glance, including best sellers/promotions in each category.
• Navigation is good. Features on every page include tabs at top (Books, Music, etc.), search boxes, and links to the Help Desk and Shopping Cart.
• Search results page says how many books of a certain type are in stock, and the lowest price offered. In addition, the search results are sortable by different variables. Neat!
• Account button allows customer to manage lists and posted items.
• Sidebar comparison of other major online retailers facilitates comparison shopping.

Frustrating Aspects of This Site that We Should Avoid in BESS:

• Requires log in, and sometimes if you use Back button you lose your logged-in state and must do it again.
• Separate registration required for buying and selling. Must add some information twice.
• Lack of easy exits! Argh! While I was going through the buying and selling process during evaluation, I wanted to cancel, since I didn’t want to actually buy or sell anything. There were no Cancel buttons anywhere, not in the checkout process or the selling process. I had to simply exit the window, hoping my changes weren’t saved.

IV. Initial Design Ideas

Mary's Design Idea
Shirley's Design Idea
Susanne's Design Idea

V. Final Task Flow

View Screen List and Task Flow