Recommending a Mockup

After reviewing the three devcathlon user interface mockups from team 4, team 5 and team 6, I would recommend using all three mockups.  Actually a combination of all three mockups all had a key feature that would complement each other.  An example of a combination can be; using the expand and the collapse feature from team 6, with the match details used in team 5.  Also the level system from team 6 can be used as the games level system. 

Out with the old

Once these three teams can combine the key features from each, they can work on removing things.  One part that they can remove is the home page section; after logging into the game, the user should just proceed to his profile.  Also having the capability of receiving mail through devcathlon, just have a section where you can write mail.  Then the mail would be received at the user’s registered email address.  It would lighten the programming burden and lessen the user’s trouble of having another mail box to check. 

In with the new

When all the unnecessary parts have been removed, the team might want to add in some new features.  Possibly taking advantage of the Yahoo’s user interface widget’s tooltip, with this feature added in pop up containers can hold dynamic information for images, links, or even text.  Also another thing that the developers may want to incorporate into the interface is the use of some Ajax.  With more white spaces becoming available; Ajax can be used by having a new page load within a current page, making it more dynamic.  An example the dynamic page and tooltip feature can be seen at Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts. 

     

Example of dynamic pages.

 A small additional feature that could be included is the ability to open a new window when a certain link is clicked.  For instance a user browses a team’s project list and sees a project that’s appealing.  When the link for that project is clicked, it shouldn’t take the user away from the devcathlon site; but simply open a new window to the project page, possibly a Google project page.  This can be done by easily using this hyper link line, “target="_blank">Link text here”.

 

Having the new features of a dynamic page and a tooltip with dynamic context, will making traveling around the site less annoying; having the user not have to keep clicking back to previous pages.  Also with a new window or tab opening for outside links, the user can explore outside of the devcathlon site, but still be inside.  The new additions will highly reduce back tracking, also make the site more professional and presentable. 

Recommendation

My recommendation, though all the teams did an awesome job in their mockups, but I would have to go with Team 4.  Not on any bias feelings, but because it would be less code to import into this mockup.  The expand and collapse feature requires a lot of coding, rather than tracing and pasting hug chunks of code into another mockup.  I really can’t wait to see how the site will look after its combined and cleaned up, hopefully with the new features I mentioned.