FBFDesign


 * Group Members:**

Aida Soleimani Ailun Liu Yifu Ma Felix Anderson


 * Part 2:**

Aida's Prototype Ailun's Prototype These prototypes are similar in several ways. Most pages, including search pages and profile pages, allow interaction with a substantial amount of information, but the user has to look through several tabs in order to access it all, and the user does not know how much information is available to them until they visit them all. On the other hand, because of the separation of information, the screen at any given moment contains a very manageable amount of information.

Yifu's Prototype This prototype contains a large amount of information on each screen--in fact, the entire prototype consists of a main page and two pop-up windows originating from that page. While providing an abundance of available information all at once, it has the downside of being visually crowded, and some buttons and functions are difficult to understand at first glance. Users are not given any explicit control over searching for users; the search is based entirely on information already in the user's profile. While this is appealing in its simplicity on the user's end, it might prove difficult to implement in a way that is thorough and consistent enough to make up for the lack of manual user control.

Felix's Prototype This Prototype's Main page focuses on the profile searching function, which is loaded all into one large menu. The menu allows users to see all search criteria at once, but is busier-looking than its alternatives. It also takes up a majority of the space on the page so that there's not much left for the results to be displayed, unless the search terms are collapsed--but then none of the search terms are visible.

In addition to all these assessments, none of the prototypes quite give a full picture of the system as a complete, closed system. An attempt at a walkthrough of a set of basic tasks will result in the roadblock of needing a page that isn't provided.


 * Part 3:**

We have decided to refine Felix's prototype for part 4. The consistency of format unifies the system and allows easy navigation to the most important pages. We will use Yifu's idea of signing in through TERPmail accounts.

Though both search approaches had merits, we decided on favoring the manual control of Felix, Aida, and Ailun's versions over the automatic process of Yifu's search.


 * Part 4:**

Refined Version Transition Diagram