Chapter 6: The Foundations of Design: Scenarios and Requirements

1. Chapter 6: The Foundations of Design: Scenarios and Requirements Using Actors and Settings to Describe How Users Accomplish Tasks Continuing the camera phone example, scenarios can be established to describe each persona’s use of the planned photo organization software. Steve Steep (Southwest Road Trip) Last summer, Steve and his girlfriend Gina took a three-week trip around the southwestern United States visiting national parks and other sights, including Death Valley, Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon. They brought along their bikes and hiking gear so they could do a lot of exploring at the places they visited. Steve also brought along his camera phone, and he and Gina took hundreds of digital photos with it during the trip. They could have the pictures automatically transferred from the camera to the PhotoCat management system anywhere in the southwest where these was a mobile phone reception. (When he took pictures in some of the more remote regions, he’d have to wait a day or two to have the photos uploaded.) Another nice feature was he could mark some of the uploaded photos as publicly viewable on his PhotoCat account. Friends and family could visit his PhotoCat page periodically, see the latest photos, and track his and Gina’s progress without having to wait for a phone call. The photos were of a little lower quality than those he could take with his digital camera, but the sharing features made the tradeoff worth it. A few days after Steve and Gina returned home, they logged into their PhotoCat account to revisit the trip highlights. Using the metadata-based filtering system, they could easily view just the photos taken in the southwestern United States as well as subsets from the particular towns and national parks where they stopped. (The phone had automatically added GPS and Cell ID metadata at the time of capture and was able to match the coordinates to a remote database of geographic locations.) Some of their favorite photos were of a funky rundown auto shop where their Ford Focus was towed after the radiator blew along Route 66 west of Albuquerque. Gina snapped the photos with the camera phone while Steve talked to the mechanic. A print of one of the photos hangs in the living room of their apartment. After they got back from their trip, they sorted through all the photos and picked out the best 50 or so to caption and post as a custom gallery on the PhotoCat site for friends and family to view.

2. Using Actors and Settings to Describe How Users Accomplish Tasks Darla Garcia (First Day of School) A few months ago, Darla enrolled her son, Mario, in a new and exciting half-day program called “Play School”. Play School is a day care program that is designed to help children learn how to play with other kids in a fun and stimulating learning environment. Darla is happy that Mario will have the opportunity to interact with other kids his own age, but is sad because this will be the first time she will be apart from him for more than an hour or two since he was born. Darla and her Husband Carlos have planned to take Mario to his first day of Play School together. They as parents think this will be a memorable moment in their son’s life and do not want to miss out on the experience. The morning arrives; Darla gets up early to make sure everything runs smoothly so Mario will be on time for his first day of Play School. Everything runs without a hitch, she even makes Mario his favorite breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham. As Carlos eats breakfast with Mario, Darla grabs her camera phone “smile boys”. Darla looks at the photo happy that she could capture the moment. After breakfast Darla goes outside and pulls the Volvo out of the cramped garage. She gets the car seat from Carlos’s Taurus and belts in into her car. While Darla is outside, Carlos puts Mario’s coat and shoes on and brings Mario outside. Darla takes the opportunity to take a picture of Carlos and Mario on the front stoop of their house “awhh you put on his red jacket” she says to Carlos. Darla sets her camera phone on the top of the car and starts to put Mario into his car seat, all of a sudden she hears “click” Carlos has snapped a picture of her and Mario. Darla is happy she got into at least one of the pictures, and knows that if it is unbecoming she will just erase it later. The family drives off heading to Berkeley and the Play School site. When the arrive Darla takes a picture of the room as Mario runs off to play. After dropping Mario off at Play School she drops Carlos off at work. When Darla arrives home she decides she wants to look at the pictures and send them off to her mom in New Hampshire. She logs into her PhotoCat account and sees the four pictures taken that morning waiting for her. “Oh that is awful, its one big blur”, she says when she realizes that Carlos had not held his hand still while taking a picture. After deleting the bad picture Darla selects the remaining three pictures and labels the group as “Mario’s first day at Play School”. She then shares the picture with her mother and Mario’s aunt Juanita.

3. Using Actors and Settings to Describe How Users Accomplish Tasks Sarah Jones (Typical College Day) It is now the middle of the semester and Sarah is working with her study group for her Psychology class to generate discussion questions for class. During a break in studying, Sarah pulls out her phone, and demonstrates it to Jason by taking a picture of him. She shows him the picture on the phone, but offers to email it to him. During the day and on her way home Sarah takes some additional pictures: a squirrel; a friend with her mouth full at lunch; the Campanile in the rain; people with umbrellas. In all, she ends up taking 11 pictures before she gets home that night. Her pictures automatically upload to PhotoCat and she views the thumbnails when she gets home. By default, PhotoCat sorts the pictures by time so it’s easy for her to find the recent pictures she wants to include. She creates her blog for the day and writes about Jason; she knows her friends in Georgia will be interested to finally see a picture of him since they’ve read about him in her previous blogs. She inserts an image link for each thumbnail she likes from the day into her blog. When she clicks a link near each thumbnail in PhotoCat, it automatically copies the needed HTML code to the clipboard ready for pasting into her blog. Next, Sarah makes sure Jason gets a few pictures in his email. She sees the picture of him that she wants to share towards the top of the thumbnails and she also shares a few of her more artistic pictures. She remembers one picture she took of Alcatraz that she especially liked. She searches for “Alcatraz” and finds a picture from her trip there. It isn’t the exact picture she wants, but she quickly spots the correct one since the thumbnail is only a few lines below. After selecting the pictures to share, she enters Jason’s email address and composes an email to him (on the PhotoCat site) that will notify him of the photoss he can look at online. Now Jason can follow a link automatically included in his email to view the pictures she has shared. She decides to send some pictures to her family while she’s using PhotoCat since she hasn’t been in touch with them for a few days. She selects some recent pictures, enters the email address and sends them a note with a link to the photos from PhotoCat. She doesn’t include the picture of Jason since she’s not sure what they would think of her crush. She isn’t worried, though, since PhotoCat only shares the photos are selects doesn’t allow browsing of other photos unless she intentionally shares them.She finishes up for the day and logs out of PhotoCat.

4. Using Actors and Settings to Describe How Users Accomplish Tasks Jake Parker (Party at The Vid) Tonight is just like any other Thursday night at Sigma Sigma Lamda (or "SWILL" as it's affectionately known amongst the brothers)--everyone has finished their last class of the week and Friday, as always, will be a relaxing day off. Thursday night, however, means good times and Jake Parker is ready to blow off some steam with his frat brothers after miring through another week of classes, readings, and Professor Myers. Everyone is going to be at The Vid tonight for their customary two dollar pitcher night. After getting a call from his friend in the Sigma Mu house, Jake pockets his phone, throws on some flip flops and walks down there with his buddies. After a couple of pitchers, Ronnie, as always, is in rare form. He stands on the bar and begins his George Bush impersonation. "Oh, man, this is priceless." Jake pulls out his camera phone and takes a couple photos of Ronnie from different angles. The night continues. Jenny shows up with Amber, Morgan, and Sarah. As an excuse for a friendly smile and some harmless flirting with Jenny, Jake flips open his phone and tells the girls to smile. The link arms, raise their glasses, and grin. Jake winks at Jenny and takes the shot. The girls gather around his phone and giggle at their photo. "Hey, I'll send you this one tomorrow," Jake tells Jenny. She smiles and laughs. "Okay!" By the end of the night, the girls have left and the boys are left to their own devious devices. Ronnie can't help but plot against Mike, who has challenged his capabilities a little too strenuously. Mike has fallen asleep at the corner table in the back of The Vid, head in his hands, slouched on the table peacefully. "Here, man, let's get him!" Ronnie urges, and before Jake knows what's happening, Ronnie gently places Mike's head in a bowl of pretzels, balances an empty pitcher on his head, and carefully rests Mike's hand in a ramekin of ketchup. Snickering, Jake clutches his sides, barely able to control himself as he flips open his phone. He takes countless pictures, snapping shots until he reaches the limit on his phone. "This is great!" Jake laughs with his buddies. "Priceless," they agree. The next day, Jake rolls out of bed around noon and, shaking the sleep off, pads down to the communal computer in the frat living room. One by one, he sends his camera phone pictures to his PhotoCat account. He then logs in to PhotoCat and browses through his collection, pleased to see that he took about 20 pictures last night, as well as 15 or so from various times in the last three weeks. As he browses, Jake is pleased to see how many of his friends from last night are listed along with each photo; while he doesn't know how it works exactly, the bluetooth recognition in his phone has captured the presence of others who were with him at The Vid last night and PhotoCat has made use of that metadata. When Jake is looking for a particular photo, he likes to remember the event he was at when he took the picture. He considers last night as "Thursday at The Vid," which is a pretty standard institution to him and his friends. Photocat's interface allows Jake to easily find Mike's funniest photo: the location of the thumbnail image on a map lets Jake know the photo comes from the block where The Vid is located, and the date tells Jake that it was last night, not last week when Mindy, his ex-girlfriend, was there. What's neat about Photocat is that Jake can see how he consistently takes photos every Thursday at The Vid. 'It's like a neat little group of shots,' Jake thinks. 'And they're always right there on the map, on Thursdays. I wonder how they do that?' But for now, Jake is really excited to wake up Mike and show him how goofy he was last night. And for that matter, Ronnie's dance on the bar was unforgettable. "Hey, guys, come here! You've got to see this!" Jake hollers to his frat brothers. The group gathers around the computer to look at Jake's pictures as he jokingly narrates the events of the night before. Laughter ensues.

5. Chapter 7: The Foundations of Design: The Framework and Refinement Establish the basic framework for the planned software. • Define the software’s form factor, i.e., its basic physical setup • Specify the software’s basic posture, i.e., how much attention the user is expected to devote to the software when operating it • Determine the software’s primary data elements and their attributes • Specify the functional elements (the operations that can be performed on the data elements and their interface representations) • Organize the data and functional elements into a hierarchy • Sketch preliminary interfaces and develop low-fidelity prototypes • Construct key path scenarios, depicting how the primary personas would interact with the interface • Set up validation scenarios, depicting less likely or less significant interactions • Refine the interface into a high-fidelity prototype