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 #3: Mike Looks at the Photo Gallery

After writing his story, Mike decides it would be fun to look at the photo gallery. He clicks the link for the gallery and glances around on the following page. He looks at the page for a few moments, confused because he was hoping to find more than just two pictures. As he is about to go back to the main Nostalgia page, he realizes that the pictures themselves are links for bigger galleries. After thinking for a minute, he decides he is more interested in downtown Blacksburg than the train station, so he clicks the picture for downtown. Once again, he finds himself a bit confused, not realizing at first that if you click on a thumbnail, it will bring up a bigger copy of the picture. Finally, he does so on the first picture and begins scrolling through the pictures using the "Next Photo" link. When he gets to the last picture, he decides to go back to the photo gallery, clicking the link which is so marked. Unfortunately, a screen comes up saying that his link was not found. John decides to give up and closes his browser.

Use of photographs in the Nostalgia system.
+ Might help users to remember things from their past which had been forgotten.
+ Might stimulate users to write a story about a photograph.
- BUT takes a lot of time to load pictures, especially since many seniors have slow modem connections.
- BUT might add more clutter to a system which might have inexperienced web users, possibly confusing them.

Using the pictures themselves as links to move throughout the photo gallery.
+ Gives the user a visual representation of exactly what they are moving into.
+ Gives the user a large area to link, since seniors might not be good at doing fine movements with a mouse.
- BUT some people might not realize that the picture is a link and miss out on things.
- BUT it does not conform with other links throughout the system and could be confusing.

Use of thumbnails for the pictures on the gallery pages.
+ Allows the user to only see pictures which are of interest to him.
+ Saves time from loading whole pictures.
- BUT might be blurry (especially with old pictures) and of little help.
- BUT might confuse some users who don't realize that there are bigger copies of the pictures.