HCI 590 (IxD)

Spring 2019

Craig Miller

Weekly Notes

Assignments

Assignment 2
Interaction Design and Analysis: Expense Reimbursement
Due Saturday May 11 before 11:30pm

Overview

For this project, you will design an interface that allows users to apply for expense reimbursements. You will then provide some analysis drawing upon theories presented in class.

Design Requirements and Scenarios

The interactive interface must allow users to submit expense events and expenses. There may be multiple expenses that belong to a specific expense event.

The user needs to provide the following for each expense event:

  • The purpose for the expenses (e.g. travel, event catering)
  • 5-digit account number (can be retrieved with account title)
  • Date or range of dates
  • List of expenses, each including:
    • Type of expense (lunch, lodging, airfare, catering)
    • Date or range of dates
    • Amount
    • Document upload
    • Comment (optional)

The interface should summarize the expenses and provide a total amount for each expense event.

The interface should provide a summary of expense events of the past year. In addition to name, submitter, purpose, account and amount, it should provide the status: submitted, pending, paid. The events should appear for the person who paid for the event and for the person who submitted the expenses (If Sam submits expenses for Sarah, Sam should be able to see his personal expenses and the expenses he submitted submitted for Sarah).

Note that each event (e.g. conference) can have multiple expenses, each with their own details.

Assumptions

  • The user has already authenticated and specified the identity of the person requesting the reimbursement.
  • The user has already obtained PDF files documenting the expense.

Scenarios

Sofia has just returned from a conference. She paid for airfare, meals, conference registration and lodging with her own credit card. She has obtained PDFs for all of the expenses. She then reviews each PDF to obtain the required information for each expense. Finally she submits the expense information so that she can be reimbursed.

Nicholas is an office assistant who routinely files expense reimbursements on the behalf of other employees at his company. In a typical scenario, he obtains the PDF documents and puts them in a folder. He then steps through each PDF to find the needed information for each expense.

Sophia returns to the page to see the status of her expense events.

Both Sofia and Nicholas have experience using web browsers on a daily basis. They can competently complete tasks found in common web apps (e.g. online banking, airplane tickets, etcs.).

Analysis

In addition to producing the interaction design, provide an analysis drawing upon the theories in class. There should be an analysis for an intermittant user (e.g. Sofia) and a frequent, practiced user (e.g. Nicholas). The analysis should motivate the effectiveness of the design. As appropriate, explain how the analysis led to any revisions.

Deliverables

The design and documentation should be well organized and easy to review. To ensure full coverage, you will probably want to include a flowchart covering all tasks and interactions. Include wireframes and explanations as appropriate. Choice of wireframe tool is at your discretion. Finally, include details of your design process. If useful, include intermediate diagrams. The document should emphasize resulting design with process details appearing later.

The analysis need only address one theory for each user category. Consider diagrams, goal stacks, and action lists as possible content for inclusion.

Submission

The submitted document should use a common presentation format, ideally PDF. Submit the document through D2L. A rubric for grading the assignment is present with the dropbox submission folder.

Grading

This project will be reviewed using the following criteria:

  • Ease of review. The document is organized and content presented to faciliate review of the above criteria.
  • Completeness. Documentation and diagrams should cover all required elements.
  • Analysis. Effectively draws upon theories, principles or explanations of how the design addresses the user goals.
  • Effectiveness. The design should address appropriate user-experience goals such as efficiency, learnability and reliability.
  • Process documentation. The document should provide details of the design process and motivate the resulting design. Note: final document should provide easy access to the resulting design, with process details appearing later.