Design Rationale

Evaluation

  Scenario Analysis

      Explore the Site

      Add New Story

      Photo Gallery

      Guestbook

      Add Annotation

  Interview/Survey

  Trade-offs

  Conclusion

Enhancement proposal

Conclusion

Visit Nostalgia

Scenario #1: Joe Explores the Nostalgia System

Joe was a resident of Blacksburg in the early 1950s. He has heard about the Blacksburg Nostalgia site and decides he wants to look at it for himself. He goes to the site and begins to explore. Joe's first thought about the site is that it does not seem to be very well organized. All of the information is pushed into one long, dense page with no quicklinks to get to the different parts of the page quickly. Overall, though, Joe likes the contents of the page. He enjoys the stories (although some headings were vague or innappropriate, he though) and annotations, but wishes there were some way that they could be related together, or that some sort of chronology could be ascertained. Further, Joe wishes there were ways other than stories and the guestbook to communicate. He would like to see some way to carry on conversations, perhaps in various discussion groups. Finally, he thinks old music or other media would add to the nostalgic qualities of the site.

Organization of the main Nostalgia page.
+ Everything is on one page, so it is easy to locate.
+ Users won't get lost in a chain of links and not be able to find the main page again.
- BUT it is a lot of information to digest for one page and could confuse users.
- BUT it might be hard to find a particular thing a user is looking for.
- BUT the lack of organization or of a quicklink menu might cause some users to not realize a certain piece of functionality is available.

Use of story headings.
+ Allows the author to title his story.
+ Gives the user an idea of what a story will be about.
- BUT some titles might be misleading.
- BUT some titles might be too vague.

Having the story headings all on the main, front page.
+ Since stories are the main part of Nostalgia, it allows the user to get right into the most important part of the site.
+ Stops the user from possibly getting lost in a chain of linked pages.
- BUT it clutters the front page.
- BUT users might find it annoying to scroll through the entire list.