Scenarios
Scenarios
It's the end of the month, and Barb needs to reconcile her record of invoices to those on found in the Banner Finance system. She uses a Brio report to do this comparison. First, she launches Netscape from her PC and uses a bookmark to locate the Brio website. She clicks her mouse in the username field, types in her id, tabs to the password field, types in her password, and then clicks the login button with her mouse. The Brio application is loaded in a new Netscape window and presents a list of clickable report choices. Barb clicks on the appropriate report and is presented with selection of clickable buttons corresponding to the level of detail of the report. She clicks ... and immediately sees a sequence of pop-up windows requiring the fiscal year, calendar year (month specification), and department for the report. After a couple of minutes, the system responds with a display of the report. Not trying to decipher the report on the screen, Barb chooses the print icon to produce a hard copy. Lastly, in trying to exit Brio, she is presented with a pop-window asking her if she would like to save changes made. Barb clicks no as a precautionary measure, wondering how she could of made changes in just printing a report.
Bob is in charge of multiple departments and would like to check the financial status of these departments. He uses a Brio report to provide the information he needs. The computer at his desk is a Macintosh and Brio has not been installed on it, so he goes to his secretary's office to use her PC. After logging into Brio, choosing the appropriate type of report, and a departmental level of detail, he enters the appropriate information into the pop-up windows and begins to wait. The system returns with an error message. Determined, Bob re-enters his previous input and tries again. After waiting a significant amount of time, his report appears to be loading on the screen, but then he sees a "Timed Out" error message and all of his report is lost. Lastly, Bob tries one more time to get his report but is interrupted by a phone call in the process of entering in his information. He decides to quit for the day and try again tomorrow, when maybe less people will be on the system and he'll have better luck. He tries to close a pop-up window with the familiar X in the upper right-hand corner. The window closes but the hour glass cursor never returns to an arrow. Recognizing this as a quirk of the system he attempts to click with the hour glass to close the Brio session. Unsuccessful with hour glass clicks in various parts of the interface, he resorts to restarting the machine with the keystroke Control-Alt-Delete.
+ familiar software package to users, limiting the learning curve and reusing previous knowledge
+ using a familiar application may reduce psychological barriers against Banner Finance use
+ clearly distinguishes between report tasks and query tasks
- requires users to have more than one software application open on their machine, possibly slowing computer response time
- confusing to users as to which software package they are in or need to be in
- maybe result in opening or closing the wrong application when not consciously thinking about one's actions
- requires users to know the address or have a bookmark to the Brio website
+ forces users to enter in the all of the specifics which are required
+ requires immediate attention
- does not provide an error message if the format of the input data is incorrect or unrealistic
- requires the user to either memorize or read the small print to learn the correct format
- it is not obvious to users which specific piece of information they are providing in any given window due to small font size
+ similar to the login for the Banner Finance application
+ initial screen has a noticeable and unavoidable login section in large text in the middle of the screen
- requires a mouse click in the text field before typing appears
- requires a mouse click after typing in login data
+ limits server activity, preventing bottlenecks in the system
+ facilitates many users and multiple requests
- can be frustrating when lengthy server time is needed for a task
- annoying and possibly confusing when results are cut off, just as they start to appear
- discourages further use
+ not a difficult quirk to learn, playing with the hour glass cursor while waiting is not uncommon
- unclear if the system is still working or not responding
- is inconsistent with the Operating System interface and most other applications
- is not obvious to novice users of the system
+ similar to viewing an html file, including similar scrollbar features
- somewhat hard to read and understand the report on the screen
- unclear how many pages there are or where the page breaks occur, unlike other applications
- requires users to have an additional application, Brio, installed and configured on their computer
+ forces user to think twice about any changes they have made
- confusing where changes are not possible
- confusing when no changes have been made