IS 213 Interface Design and Development: TraveLite

Our approach to the initial design process was highly collaborative. We sat down as a group to sketch out ideas with pencil and paper and came up with two different interaction flows for the TraveLite System. Once a design was sketched out, we did a walkthrough of the interaction flow using each of the three scenarios, iterating as appropriate to incorporate the needs of the persona in question. After working through each of the scenarios, modifying our paper sketches as we went along, we decided to record our initial ideas regarding screens and interaction flows in a form which could easily be saved and modified throughout our design iterations. We drew the initial screens for each of our designs in Visio. We will change and print out these Visio screens as needed during the lo-fi prototyping phase of design.

We initially came up with an interaction flow that was focused on a sequential, step-by-step flow through the decision process of customizing a guide. The flow could be truncated, stepping the user only through those categories she has specified, but the selection process within each cateogry was relatively detailed.

While this approach has its merits, it was less than ideal for Evan, who is concerned with the length of time customizing a guide will take. To minimize the number of steps Evan would have to take, we came up with a different interaction flow, by which the TraveLite system would make a "first cut" of the content based on the specified preferences of the user. This way, Evan could opt-out of the detailed refinements if he so chose. Furthermore, his preferences can be saved as "profiles" and applied later, speeding the guide building process in the future.

Some design issues we face include:

constraining the profile questions to be sufficiently generic to apply across destinations, while still being helpful in making a cut of the content;
deciding which style of interactions is appropriate for the various attributes, and fitting in multiple attributes wihtout overloading the user;
whether people are likely to puchase more than one guide at a time, which requires a full shopping cart feature;
whether to allow people to purchase guides and postpone downoad to later, possibly through an email link to the download, or making it available from the "My Guides" page