Design Plan & Low Fidelity Prototype

Team 6: Rachel Ogg, David Champlin

Project Target: UM Legislative Update

Part I: Design Specifications


  1. Identify interface metaphors and analogies that help people to understand and use the product.
  2. Answer the following questions by Erickson (1990) for selection of a good metaphor:

    • How much structure does the metaphor provide?
    • How much of the metaphor is relevant to the problem?
    • Is the interface metaphor easy to represent?
    • Will your audience understand the metaphor?
    • How extensible is the metaphor?

    Metaphor for comment box:
    A Facebook style comment/post box or a blog-style comment box.

    • How much structure does the metaphor provide?
    • They both provide good structure as posting comments to blogs and/or Facebook is familiar to many people. The Facebook-style comment allows the user to immediately post a comment for all to see. The blog-style comment allows the user to post a comment to a blog article and, depending on the settings of the blog owner, the comment is either posted immediately or moderated for approval/disapproval by the owner of the site. If it is approved it is posted beneath the article in a threaded series of comments by other readers.

    • How much of the metaphor is relevant to the problem?
    • Allowing users to comment on articles is relevant as most people are accustomed to the process of leaving comments. Allowing the user to leave unmoderated comments is less relevant as the university will probably wish to have some measure of control over what information is displayed on their site.

    • Is the interface metaphor easy to represent?
    • Yes, the comments could be threaded underneath their respective articles similar to the way a blog or Facebook would display users’ comments.

    • Will your audience understand the metaphor?
    • Yes, because commenting on articles and other people’s posts is quite common.

    • How extensible is the metaphor?
    • I honestly don’t know how extensible this metaphor is or even that it needs to be. Once people leave a comment or two I don’t know how/if they’ll take the conversation any further. That being said I think the metaphor will be sufficient for a period of time long enough to accommodate the task at hand. (if I’m interpreting this correctly).

    Metaphor for searching for archived articles:
    A search box on the site that allows a user to enter keywords to search by.

    • How much structure does the metaphor provide?
    • Good structure is provided as using a search box to find information is firmly ingrained in most users’ mental models by this point. From the Google search engine to small search boxes in the top corners of websites, users know that they can search a site for content by typing in a keyword or phrase.

    • How much of the metaphor is relevant to the problem?
    • The entire metaphor is relevant to the problem. Searching for content is what it is - the user enters a search term and receives a list of results either from the site itself or from the greater world wide web.

    • Is the interface metaphor easy to represent?
    • This is very easy to represent and is as simple as locating a small white search box somewhere on the site.

    • Will your audience understand the metaphor?
    • Yes. As mentioned above using a search box to locate information online is standard operating procedure by now.

    • How extensible is the metaphor?
    • Very. After the user begins a search on the website a list of links will display that could conceivably take the user to many different locations online. From that point the user is able to expand her research as new articles and/or ideas are presented.

    Metaphor for locating additional information about a particular article:
    Placing links to related content throughout the article or the addition of the “Read more” link at the very end of an article.

    • How much structure does the metaphor provide?
    • Adequate structure is provided as the concept of linking to additional content within the content of an online article is extremely prevalent.

    • How much of the metaphor is relevant to the problem?
    • The metaphor is very relevant as users are familiar with the underlined links that are sprinkled throughout the web intended to guide them to related content.

    • Is the interface metaphor easy to represent?
    • Yes. Links to relevant content on other state and/or federal websites could be placed throughout the individual articles.

    • Will your audience understand the metaphor?
    • Yes.

    • How extensible is the metaphor?
    • The metaphor could be made extensible by providing brief bibliographies for each article. This list of references would enable the user to view at-a-glance a larger context for the article in question.

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