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Assignment #4
Introduction
Revised Scenarios
Prototype
Method
Test Measures
Results and Discussion
Appendix
Complete
Task Scenarios
Scenario #1 - Setup Initial Content
(Clara)
A new year at SIMS was beginning. The entire first-year
class sat in South Hall 110 going through orientation. Phil
Walz described how each student could track their individual
courses, assignments,
and
progress
through degree tracks in a web-based portal, called MySIMS. Other
news, such as general SIMS announcements, would be presented through
MySIMS as well. When Phil finished his talk, Kevin Heard stepped-up
to tell students about the technical infrastructure at SIMS. Even
though she found the extensive list of available applications rather
overwhelming, Clara's concerns were forgotten when he brought MySIMS
up on the overhead. Kevin outlined how each student could customize
their instance of
MySIMS
by selecting from an extensive
list of "channels" (i.e. content and tools) and color schemes
(i.e. skins) or adding in their favorite links. Clara spoke to a
few
students when Kevin excused the first-years; then she went down to
the basement computer lab to setup her MySIMS.
Steps:
- Clara logged into cardea using her username and password
- She was presented with a welcome page explaining the
benefits of MySIMS to students. The page included a screen
shot of the portal.
- She read the screen and selected the "Customize" button
at the bottom of the screen. Students who wanted to use
the default instance of MySIMS could select "No Thanks".
They would be presented with standard channels,
tabs, and preferences.
- The next screen prompted Clara to indicate her degree
track, instant messenger ID, and interests. Other details,
such as her home zip, birthday, and courses, were already
populated. The screen shot was refreshed and reflected
Clara's selections.
- She wanted to customize her color scheme. A
note at the bottom of the page informed her that by clicking
on the Preferences link, she could make more customizations
- including selecting a skin.
- After selecting the "Save" button,
Clara was brought into her MySIMS homepage.
- She looked over the contents of each tab (Home, Courses,
UCB, Portfolio, and News) and saw they were customized
according to her selections.
- Clara thought about making more updates, but she was
already late to meet some other first-years. She logged
off and ran to meet them outside.
Scenario #2 - View Content
(Isaac)
Isaac enjoyed hearing about SIMS, but he had been running late this
morning and had not had time to read his New York Times. A few clusters
of students around him were talking about technology and other topics
covered during orientation. Isaac started to open his newspaper
but stopped when one of the students took out his laptop and started
to blare some songs by a local punk band. He decided to check out
the couches in the basement computer lab. They were already taken,
so he went over to the meeting table. Clara wasn't taking up too
much space, so he began to read near her. After listening to her
explain how wonderful it was, Isaac realized she wasn't going to
let him read until he tried it out. He didn't mind too much. He
had wanted to check out some courses anyway.
Steps:
- Isaac logged into cardea using his username and password
- After glancing over the welcome page, he decided to go
with the Default settings. His courses would be prepopulated
and all students would receive the SIMS announcements "channel"
already.
- He was brought to his MySIMS homepage. A
note at the top of the page informed him that customizations
could be done by selecting the Preferences link.
- He clicked on the Courses tab. It was brought to the
front. All of his courses were listed on the left side
of the screen. By clicking on each one, the right-hand side
brought up general information and this week's topics,
readings, due dates, and announcements.
- By changing the week, Isaac was able to receive a summary
view of topics, readings, and due dates for the entire semester.
- Some upcoming readings required
downloading. He clicked on their titles, brought up the
electronic versions,
and printed them nearby.
- This activity had allowed Isaac to memorize all the upcoming
deadlines, so he decided to log off and go back to his
New York Times.
Scenario #3 - Remove Existing Content
(Thomas)
Thomas was thrilled to find out other students enjoyed his favorite
punk band. Plus he had made some friends when he complained about
needing a Windows laptop for school. Even though a number of them
had bought Mac Powerbooks because OS X was based on UNIX, they understood
his dilemma. Thomas had made the decision to go with a PC after seeing
how many Windows-based applications SIMS provided figuring he could
always use his Linux box at home for coding. Plus he planned to take
some classes at the business school. Is professional experience told
him most of the students there would probably be using Windows-based
machines. Fortunately the second floor lab had some UNIX machines.
He decided to walk up to the lab and check out the UNIX set-up. Some
other students were using MySIMS. Thomas wanted to check out the source
code - specifically how to remove and add channels. So, he decided
to logon.
Steps:
- Thomas logged into cardea using his username and password
- He read the welcome page. To gain insight into all of
MySIMS' functionality, he decided to select the "Customize"
button.
- He entered his degree track and selected a few areas
of interest. He knew other students would appreciate the
screen shot updating based on their selections.
- After clicking "Save", he was brought to his
MySIMS homepage.
- Selecting Source on the browser's View menu allowed
Thomas to examine the code behind the XML-based, MySIMS.
- His stomach was beginning to grumble, so he quickly glanced
over the MySIMS tab. At the top of each channel were
three icons - looking glass, up arrow, and X.
- More grumbling... Thomas read his
horoscope. He found its inclusion amusing but he preferred
to have his girlfriend keep him up-to-date on his star
sign.
- Upon selecting the X
at the top of the horoscope channel,
a dialog box appeared asking him to confirm his deletion.
He clicked the Yes button.
- Investigating how channels were added would have to
wait until later. For now, Thomas needed to get some
food,
so he
logged
off.
Scenario #4 - Add Content
(Thomas and Clara)
Thomas loved that Telegraph was so near campus. Grabbing lunch hadn't
taken very long. Along the way he had run into a guy who graduated
the year before him at Stanford. He was earning his PhD in EECS and
told Thomas about a cool RSS feed.
Since
he
had
some time to spare, he decided to research the feed while
eating his lunch in the downstairs' computer lab. He sat down on
the couch.
Clara was sitting at the other end. She was talking to some students
while booting up her laptop. One had worked as an Information Architect
previously. Clara
was interested in human-computer
interaction,
but she was unfamiliar with Information Architecture. Clara said
she wanted to add it as one of her
interests.
Their conversation reminded Thomas that Kevin Heard
had mentioned RSS fields
could be added to MySIMS as favorite links. He logged on at the same
as Clara.
Steps:
- Using their individual machines, Clara and Thomas
logged into cardea and then entered MySIMS.
- Thomas quickly navigated to Preferences while Clara scanned
her MySIMS homepage. After reading her horoscope, she clicked
on the Preferences link as well.
- On the left, a drop down menu labeled "Choose Tab"
was defaulted to the MySIMS homepage. Clicking the menu,
showed the other tabs - Courses, UCB, Portfolio, and News
- could be selected as well. An interactive preview of
the homepage tab was presented on the left. Below the "Choose
Tab" drop down was a radio button indicating Add
Channel or Add Tool. Both Thomas and Clara selected the
button next to Add Channel.
- After doing so, another radio button option appeared.
The selected button was next to an active drop down menu
labeled Available Channels. Clara selected the Information
Architecture
channel.
Thomas
chose to select the radio button next to Add RSS Feed /
Favorite Link. Doing so, caused two text boxes (Name, URL)
next to the radio button
to become active. The Available Channels drop-down was
no longer active.
Thomas typed in the name and URL for the RSS feed his acquaintance from Stanford
had
mentioned.
- Clara clicked the Add button next to the Available Channels
drop down menu. Doing so caused a box labeled "Information
Architecture" to appear in the interactive preview of the
homepage tab. Other boxes representing her existing channels
and tools were already on the preview. Thomas clicked Add
next to the URL field as well. An box
labeled with the feed Name appeared on his interactive
preview.
- Mousing over the newly added boxes caused their cursors
to change to a hand. Thomas quickly moved the box to the
spot on his homepage where he wanted the feed to appear.
To put in an the exact spot he wanted, he moved some existing
content as well. Clara dragged the Information Architecture
box to a different column on her homepage. Then she decided
to use the navigational tool in the middle of the Information
Architecture box (four arrows pointing up,
down, right, and left) to move it higher on the page.
- Satisfied with their work, both clicked
Done. If either had wanted to, they could have walked through
the steps again and added more content
- Clara and Thomas clicked on their respective MySIMS tab
and viewed their new content.
Scenario #5 - Customize Presentation
(Clara)
After reading some of the content about Information Architecture,
Clara clicked on the other tabs. She looked over her homework for
the week in the Courses tab. Reading the campus news in the UCB tab
reminded her that the default white,
blues, and yellows of her MySIMS were UCB's
colors. Even though she liked UCB, she thought a more vibrant color
combination would better suit her tastes.
Steps:
- Clara selected the Preferences link and returned to the
interactive preview of her homepage tab.
- Above the interactive preview was a button labeled "Choose
Skin".
She clicked on it.
- The page was refreshed. All the content in the interactive
preview had been removed. Instead each section was labeled
- Tabs, Header, Menu Bar, Content Items, Body Text, Background.
To the right were a series of thumbnail images. Each one
had a radio button by its label. Five were visible, but
a View More link indicated more were
available. Underneath the fifth image was a radio
next to option titled Custom Skin. Clara tried selected
the radio button next to the Magenta Moon thumbnail. The
tabs turned shades of purple. The Background was white.
The Body Text was purple. Clara loved it!
- She was about to click the Save button when she realized
some people might not like purple as much as she does.
So, she selected the radio button next to the Custom Skin
option.
- A color picker appeared next to each section
on the interactive preview. The interactive preview allowed
her to view her work in real-time.
- After going through a few color combinations, she settled
on one she was happy with. The tabs were a medium shade
of gray. The Header red. The Menu Bar white. The Content
Items were a deep shad of magenta. The Body Text was black. The
background was was white.
- She clicked Save
- Happy with her work, Clara decided to meet some students
for Thirsty Thursday. She logged
off MySIMS.
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