This design
focuses on a site devoted to courses of potential interest to SIMS students.
It essentially follows the tasks outlined in the scenario for Ed who is
trying to figure out his direction in life as well as the courses he would
like to take next semester. This site will contain information about courses
that SIMS students have taken including a description of each course and
comments that students have posted about the course. For this design,
we are referring to "messages" as "comments" since the discussion revolves
around commentary on a particular course rather than communication between
different parties in the form of messages. The site will, of course, also
allow students to add additional comments. In addition, the course discussion
site will also include a feature that enables students to pick courses
they find interesting and place them into a personalized portfolio that
can be stored for future reference. The design of this site is largely
based upon the design of Plastic.com, a "links and discussion" site where
users submit news stories and then post comments relevant to the stories.
The flow chart shows the
basic navigation through the site.
A standard set of
toolbars is provided on each page. These toolbars are designed to facilitate
navigation through the site by allowing the user to jump from any page
on the site to any pre-defined section of the site. Sketch
A shows the standard elements:
- The logo of the
course discussion site;
- A pre-defined
list of course groupings, e.g., required courses, courses pertaining
to information design, law and society, etc. Each course is categorized
under one grouping;
- Links allowing
the user to post a new course, view his/her course portfolio, search
the course descriptions and/or comments, and a help section.
Sketch
B shows the entry page to the site. The entry page includes a summary
of the information pertaining to one course from each course grouping
to the right of the standard toolbars. The course within each grouping
that has received the most recent posted comment will be featured on
the entry page. The following elements will be displayed for each course
on the entry page:
- A standard icon
indicating the course grouping under which the course has been categorized;
- The course name
and a link to the course homepage;
- The name of the
instructor and a link to the instructor's homepage;
- The semester
in which the course was most recently offered or is currently being
offered. We have not decided yet whether information pertaining to
courses offered in previous years should be archived or not within
a section that is separate from the information pertaining to the
most recent offering of the course. Although it might make sense to
group all of the information pertaining to one course within one place,
changes in the course such as a change in the instructor might make
old information pertaining to the course irrelevant;
- A brief description
of the course;
- A link that will
take the user to a page that contains both the above information and
the comments that have been posted regarding the course. A "query
preview" next to this link will show the total number of comments
that have been posted for this course and the number of new comments
that have been posted since the last time the user accessed the comments
for this particular course;
- A link that will
take the user to a page prompting him to post a comment to the course.
In his scenario,
Ed is browsing through the various course descriptions. If he wishes
to peruse information about courses that are not listed on the entry
page, he can select one of the links leading to a particular course
grouping from the standard toolbar. As shown in Sketch
C, he will be taken to a page that looks very similar to the entry
page. The visited link for this course grouping will be displayed in
a different color than the rest of the course grouping links. This page
will contain information about all of the courses categorized under
that particular course grouping in the same form as on the entry page.
The only difference is that the icon representing the course grouping
will be at the top of the page rather than beside each course summary.
Ed can view information about courses from any of the other groupings
by clicking on another link in the standard toolbar.
In his scenario,
Ed browses the courses summarized on a particular course grouping page.
He decides to look at the comments that have been posted regarding IS
213. He clicks on the "Read Comments" link directly below the description
of IS213. A dialog box pops up asking him to log on to the course discussion
site and prompting him for his user name and password. We feel that
course comments should only be posted and viewed by SIMs students since
the comments may contain material of a sensitive nature, namely, criticisms
of a course. We are assuming that Ed has already registered and has
established his username and password. After Ed provides the requested
information, he is taken to the course page that is modeled in Sketch
D. This page contains all of the information about IS 213 found
on the previous page. It also shows the comments that have been posted
in a linear format, i.e., the first comment comes first directly below
the description of the course followed by any additional comments. The
comments also feature an optional rating consisting of no stars to five
stars that reflects the poster's opinion of the course. To the right
of the course information/course comments, there is a box that lists
courses recommended by students who have taken the course featured on
the course page. We have not decided yet whether the recommended course
section will be created automatically using a text search or will be
created by a moderator who reviews the postings and takes note of the
recommendations. In the scenario, Ed sees that IS214 has been recommended
and clicks on a link that will take him to the course page for IS214
which is again modeled by Sketch
D.
Ed would also like
to perform a search to find courses related to networking. From the
IS214 course page, he clicks on the "search" link on the standard toolbar
and is taken to a search page shown in Sketch
E. The search page contains the following elements:
- A text box in
which search terms can be entered;
- A link to a help
section that describes how to enter search terms and how the information
retrieved during a search will be ranked and displayed (we have yet
to decide exactly how the search process will work);
- A pull-down menu
that will allow Ed to choose which course grouping he wants to search.
The default is all course groupings;
- A pull-down menu
that allows Ed to search either all of the text pertaining to a particular
course (i.e., the name of the course, instructor, course description
and comments), only the name of the course, only the name of the instructor,
only the course description or only the posted comments. The default
option is all of the text;
- The semester
the course is offered and/or the time period in which the last comment
was posted. The default is all semester/all time periods;
- A submit button
that sends his query to the database.
Ed enters the term
"networking" in the search term textbox and does not change the default
attributes of the search options. He submits his query and is taken
to a page similar to Sketch F.
The search results page provides a text box containing the search term(s).
The user can refine the search by clicking on the "refine search" button
which will take him back to the search page. The individual search results
vary depending upon where in the course information the search term(s)
were found. Each result will always display the course title. If the
search term(s) were located within the description of a course, the
course title will be displayed along with the parts of the course description
that include the search term(s) which are highlighted in bold. If the
search term was found within a comment, the course title will be displayed
along with the parts of the comment that contain the search term(s).
And so forth.
A search result
is returned pertaining to IS250. Ed clicks on the link for the course
title and is taken to the course page (similar again to Sketch
D). From the IS250 course page, he decides to enroll in the course.
He first wants to make sure that the course is added to his portfolio,
so he
clicks the "add to portfolio" link and is brought to a page modeled
by Sketch G. This page displays
his schedule for the current and next semester. It reflects both courses
he is enrolled in already and courses on his "wish list". IS 250 is
automatically added to his Spring '01 schedule along with the course
control number for the course. Ed then clicks on the "enroll now" link
that will enable him to actually register for IS250 through Telebears.
At this point, we think that the "enroll now" link will lead to Telebears
on the Web. We are considering a more complex option that could somehow
enroll someone automatically without going through Telebears but do
not know if this is feasible.
This completes the
tasks defined for Ed. Although we have not defined this in Ed's scenario,
a user may want to post a comment pertaining to a particular course.
The "post comment" page is modeled in Sketch H. The user will have the
option of previewing the message he adds to the textbox. If he wishes
to make corrections to what he has written, he can return to the screen
shown in Sketch H and edit
his comments. Alternatively, he can post or cancel his comment.