Jim Watanabe, project director for the No Customer Escapes customer loyalty system for Petrie Electronics, walked into the conference room. Sally Fukuyama, from marketing, and Sanjay Agarwal, from IT, were already there. Also at the meeting was Sam Waterston, one of Petries key interface designers. Good morning, Jim said. Im glad everyone could be here today. I know you are all busy, but we need to make some real progress on the customer account area for No Customer Escapes. We have just awarded the development of the system to XRA, and once all the documents are signed, they will be coming over to brief us on the implementation process and our role in it. Im sorry, Sally said, I dont understand. If we are licensing their system, whats left for us to do? Dont we just install the system and were done? Sally took a big gulp of coffee from her cup. I wish it was that easy, Jim said. While it is true that we are licensing their system, there are many parts of it that we need to customize for our own particular needs. One obvious area where we need to customize is all of the human interfaces. We dont want the system to look generic to our loyal customerswe need to make it unique to Petrie. And we have to integrate the XRA system with our own operations, added Sanjay. For example, we have to integrate our existing marketing and product databases with the XRA CRM (see PE Figure 7-2). Thats just one piece of all the technical work we have to do. Weve already done some preliminary work on system functionality and the conceptual database, Jim said. I want to start working on interface issues now. Thats why Sam is here. What we want to do today is start work on how the customer account area should look and operate. And Sally, the customer loyalty site is a great opportunity for marketing. We can advertise specials and other pro- motions to our best customers on this site. Maybe we could use it to show offers that are only good for members of our loyalty program. Oh yeah, Sally replied, Thats a great idea. How would that look? I have ideas, said Sam. Using a drawing program on a tablet PC, he started to draw different zones that would be part of the interface. Here at the top we would have a simple banner that says Petries and the name of the program. Its not really going to be called No Customer Escapes, is it? asked Sally.

No, thats an internal name, replied Jim, but I dont know what the real name will be yet. OK, so the real name of the program will go in the banner, after Petries. Then on the left side, well have a sidebar that has overview information about the cus- tomer account, things like name and points balance, said Sam, drawing in a sidebar on the left of the screen. There will also be links to more detailed information about the account, so the customer can see more details on past transactions and on his or her profile. So the rest of the screen is open. That would be a perfect place for marketing information, suggested Sally. Would we want just one big window for marketing? Maybe we could divide it up into additional windows, so we could use one to focus on general promotions and one to advertise member only promotions? Yeah, we can do that, said Sam. Just then Jims phone beeped. Jim looked at it. Uh-oh, it was an urgent message from his boss, the director of IT. Sorry, I need to take care of this immediately, he told the group. Can you guys work on this some more and then send me some of the screen designs you come up with? Later that afternoon, after the crisis was over, Jim sat back down at his desk for the time in what seemed like a very long time. He glanced over his e-mail and noticed there was a message from Sam. Attached was a preliminary design for the customer account area. Jim opened it and looked it over (PE Figure 11-1). Hmmm, not bad, he thought. This is a good place for us to start.

CASE QUESTIONS

1. Using the guidelines from this chapter and other sources, evaluate the usability of the page design depicted in PE Figure 11-1.

2. Chapter 11 encourages the design of a help system early in the design of the human interface. How would you incorporate help into the interface shown in PE Figure 11-1?

3. Describe how cookie crumbs could be used in this system. Are cookie crumbs a desirable navigation aid for this system? Why or why not?

a-Google Welcome, John Special Otters About Contact Us OptionsLogout Account Summary Past Rewaids My Points 82 Members Only Deals! Wha's Thie ) Progress: 75% Newsletter We'll keep you informed and updated Lorem Ipsum Dolor ed molestie, neque sed fells nisl mi sed odio. Aliquam mollis metus vel dolor amet nisi vehicula accumsan luctus a pretium. More Information. Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sed molestle, neque sed fells nisl mi sed odlo. Alfiquam mollis metus vel dolor amet nisi vehicula accunsan luctus a pretium More Information.. Sign me upl PE FIGURE 11-1 Preliminary design for the customer account area (Source: Microsoft Corporation.)