Milestone 3

Narrative

Our system will allow students to see what study rooms are available and which are occupied. Students would also be able to reserve a study room for a specific amount of time on the 4th floor of MLC. When the user is on the home page, they can click between the checking the occupancy of the room and reserving a room. If they select the view occupancy tab, then the user will be taken to a page with a map where they can view each rooms availability and the overall occupancy of the floor. If the user wants to reserve a room, the user will be asked to log in to CAS and brought to a page to enter the details of their reservation: the start time, end time, and date. The user will then submit his or her info, and the system will provide the user with their reserved room and confirmation of the details. If the user wants to cancel their reservation, the reservation can be canceled from the reservation page.

For Milestone 3, we created a prototype to show out design and functionalities.

Functionalities

Viewing occupancy
- page with a map where they can view each rooms availability and the overall occupancy of the floor
Reserving a room
- the system will provide the user with their reserved room and confirmation of the start time, end time, and date.

Usability Specification

Reserve a study room
View occupancy
Cancel reservation

Benchmark Tasks

Have a few friends each test our prototype by starting from the home screen and completing these tasks.

Have them check availability on the 3rd floor.
1. Are they understanding that red means occupied and lack of color means vacant?
Have them reserve a room on the 4th floor.
Have them go from checking availability on the 3rd straight to reserving room on 4th floor without going back to home screen.
Have them cancel their reservation.
Have them try to reserve a room on 4th floor and it give them the error message that no room is available at that time, and have them redo it.

Questionnaire (using Google Form):

On a scale of 1-10 (1 being the most difficult and 10 being very straightforward), how easy was it to navigate through this application?
On a scale of 1-10, (1 being definitely not and 10 being all the time) how likely would you be to use this system if it was active?
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being definitely not and 10 being all the time), how often would you use this system if it was active?
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being definitely not and 10 being all the time), how likely would you recommend this system to a friend?
On a scale of 1-5 (1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree), do you prefer the system over the current system?
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being definitely not and 10 being appealing), how appealing is the system aesthetically?
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being definitely not and 10 being appealing), how easy is it to reserve a room?
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being definitely not and 10 being appealing), how easy is it to view room occupancy?

Interview Questions (Done in person):

Before:
- What do you dislike most about reservation websites?
- What do you like most about reservation websites?
- Would you use a website to reserve rooms in the MLC?
- Would you rather want to choose your desired room or have it assigned to you automatically?
After:
- Now seeing that it automatically assigns you the room, would you rather have to go through more screens to pick your own room? Or keep as an auto-assign?
- Did you ever get stuck?
- Would you like more or less words on the screen to help you navigate?
- Did you understand that red meant room was occupied? Or do we need a key?
- What other functionality should be added?
  - Ones that are necessary.
  - Ones that would be helpful, but not essential.
- Would you use this website to reserve rooms in the MLC?

Other Evaluation Techniques

Observe the user while they navigate through site.
- Are they hitting walls?
- Do they stop moving the mouse for more than 5 seconds to figure out where to go next?
- This would be appropriate because we would ask them beforehand if it was okay to observe them, and take notes on design issues.
Tell the user doing the evaluation to try and find a dead end or problem with the system.
- The user has no idea how the application was built so them trying to find errors will be more effective than our team doing that.
- They can treat it as a game trying to debunk us
Look at other projects and find things they did well that we could implement.
- Inappropriate if we steal their ideas verbatim, but not if we’re only using it as brainstorming topics for future meetings

Google Sites

Report abuse