Conclusion
We have created a prototype for a high performance address book to be used in "The University of the Future". It has been a lot of hard work and plenty of redesigning. Designing an interface is really hard for inexperienced designers especially when some functions aren't exactly documented and we had to create a lot of them by ourselves.
We have implemented the address book in C++ for the BeOS operating system. Our final version includes about 3000 lines of code and the prototype works quite well, of course not with the stylus and real data.
The design is created to look and feel as an ordinary paper based address book. That enables natural mapping for the user. We have really thought of not hiding information. Almost all information, search results, which to contact and the registers where persons and groups are stored can be viewed in the main window. The layout of the main window also leads to a design with less pop up windows that hide information from the user.
All functions that operate the application are reached via buttons for quick and easy handling. All functions can also be reached with shortcuts or via menus. We have used text on the buttons instead of icons for easy understanding and they are shaded when they aren't in operating mode.
It is possible to search in the address book or the Campus server database and the result is statically displayed in a special search result field in the main window. The user has access to the results as long as he wants, even after restarting the application. We also have a misc. text search function that can search for special categories of people or things, for example a car, to find out which persons that have a car.
It is possible to call, e-mail or print combinations of groups and persons. That depends on the static contact list. The user can simply select, or drag and drop, from the register or the search result field to the contact list.
We have also implemented some special functions like importing and exporting persons from the application, print register data and print envelops automatically.
The address book will handle large amount of persons and groups better than the address books found in today's e-mail applications. This is because the addresses are divided in several tabs and because of the powerful search function we've designed.
In summary we think the address book has a very good design and functionality and will work very well as an address book application for a notebook in the future.
You might now want to go to the next page, go back or go to the first page.