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 #4: Ken Uses the Guestbook

Ken is a long-time Blacksburg Nostalgia user who lives on the west coast. The first time Ken logged on after the recent changes were made, he decided to check out the guestbook. Ken had never thought of any stories he would like to write, but still thought it would be nice to have his name and e-mail address available on the site so old friends might find him. First, Ken looked through the already existing guestbook entries, unfortunately not recognizing any old friends. He then decided to write his own entry. Ken entered his name, location, email address, and a long comment about himself, then clicked the "Sign Our Guestbook" button. Unfortunately, because of an error in the system, it made several different entries for him, with each entry containing one line from his comments section. Confused, Ken went back to the main Nostalgia page, wrote an e-mail to the system administrator about the error (using the given link), shut down his browser, and left.

Use of a guestbook on the Nostalgia system.
+ Allows users to express their opinions of the system.
+ Allows users to find old friends (or to be found) and to e-mail those people straight off the guestbook page.
+ Allows users who do not have stories to still make it known that they are on the site.
- BUT might clutter the site.
- BUT might be used by people wanting to cause trouble to put negative or vulgar comments on a family-oriented site.

Organizing guest book entries by date.
+ Simple way to add on new entries.
+ Lets users know who has added to the system recently.
- BUT might make it hard to find entries from a particular person, especially if there are a lot in the book.

A link which allows users to write to the system administrator.
+ Allows users to point out problems, errors, or suggestions about the system.
+ Allows the system administrators to possibly get to know the users.
- BUT might be overused, overloading the administrator with e-mail.
- BUT the user might expect problems to be fixed immediately if they write the administrator.