An airline company is designing a new on-line reservation system. They want to add some direct-manipulation features. For example, they would like customers to click a map to specify the departure cities and the destinations, and to click on the calendar to indicate their schedules. From your point of view, list four benefits and four problems of the new idea compared with their old system, which required the customer to do the job by typing text.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Benefits:
a) Learning time probably reduced, but we would need usability study to verify, particularly for novice users.
b) Intuitive interface (for those who know their geography, i.e. New York is in the northeast U.S. --- individuals would need to visualize where New York is vs. Boston (to the north) or Washington, D.C. (to the south)).
c) Encourages exploration (sense of adventure for the vacationing air traveler)
d) Less syntax errors
Problems:
a) Data entry errors, e.g. pointing to the wrong city for departure or destination
b) Rapid reversibility of errors, e.g. correcting the above wrong selection of city
c) Map size would require zooming for smaller airport locations, and may take a while to navigate by direct manipulation
d) Tough to see for visually impaired
See question #2 answers above
List a few guidelines for an effective 3D interface:
a) Provide overviews so users can see the big picture
b) Allow teleoperation
c) Offer X-ray vision so users can see into or beyond objects
d) Provide history keeping
e) Permit rich user actions on objects
f) Enable remote collaboration
g) Give users control over explanatory text and let users select for details on demand
h) Offer tools to select, mark, and measure
i) Implement dynamic queries to rapidly filter out unneeded items
j) Support semantic zooming and movement
k) Enable landmarks to show themselves even at a distance
l) Allow multiple coordinated views
m) Develop novel 3D icons to represent concepts that are more recognizable and memorable