Introduction
Many of the students, staff and faculty at the university, have been equipped with a notebook (the size of an A4 sheet) since the university wants to become "The University of the Future". The notebook has a stylus, SPS, microphone jack, optional keyboard, optional video camera and a GPS receiver as input devices. The output is a color display (700x1000 pixels) and a stereo audio jack.
Our task has been to design an address book to be used with the notebook. Some of the most important functions are searching the address book and the Campus server for persons. This is because the address book is supposed to handle a large list of addresses in the register. It is also very important that the application is implemented in a way that makes it easy to use with a stylus.
The address book we designed contains functions to search the address book or the Campus server. The user can search by last name, first name, nickname, e-mail, telephone, address, misc. and group. The search results are displayed in a search result field. We have also implemented a contact list where the user can manage the persons or groups that are to be contacted via e-mail or telephone. There is a button to add either a new person or a new group. It is also possible to remove persons or groups. There are buttons to show the information about a person or a group and to print their addresses. A person’s information can be downloaded from the Campus server or updated manually. Send mail or make a call is also possible via buttons, but those buttons only start the mail or telephone applications. To add a person to a group and to add a person or a group to the contact list is also possible via buttons.
There is a field where all the persons in the address book can be found. The address book is sorted by last name. We have used a register with tabs from A to Ö and one tab for the groups. Finally there is a status bar at the bottom of the interface where information is shown to the user.
All functions are also available in the drop down menus at the menu bar. There is also the possibility to use shortcuts, for example Alt+H for help, for all functions when using the optional keyboard.
We have used the lecture slides from the course Human Computer Interaction TDDB13, and the course book Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction by Ben Sheiderman, as references when we designed this address book. Influences have also been collected from Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, the People application in BeOS (an operating system) and BeOS Developer's Guide (a book for programming in the BeOS).
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