SIGIA-L Mail Archives: SIGIA-L: Ye Olde Cart
SIGIA-L: Ye Olde Cart
From: Anders Ramsay (anders_at_mediafarm.com)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2000 - 14:14:37 EDT
This is an IA conundrum I currently am dealing with:
I have recently taken over as IA for an e-commerce site that is
several months into development, in which the previous IA quit and
left behind a site with *serious* usability/architecture problems.
One of the more pressing problems relates to the cart, or more
specifically how the notion of a cart is being implemented in this
case.
As I understand it, a cart might be defined as:
'A temporary storage space for products to be purchased by the user
in the current session.' This would then hold true to the origin of
the metaphor.
THE PROBLEM
The site concept includes an environment where users can create and
customize designs, using an in-lined environment that is a kind of
micro-version of photoshop, with multiple layers, font menus and
color palettes, and the ability to upload bitmap files and add them
to the design, and much more.
If I am a non-logged-in user, I can place items I have designed in a
cart, which will save them for the current session. Several problem
here already, but let's keep going. Now, if I create an account and
then become a registered user, I have an area called 'My Designs' to
which I can permanently save whatever I have created.
But then things start to get tricky:
As a registered user, if I place items in the cart, items are still
in the cart when I return, which makes it a de facto storage space
much like 'My Designs.' At the same time, registered users can also
store items in 'My Designs,' which is a completely separate area. The
only way to get desingns from the cart to 'My Designs' is to bring
them back into the design environment and then save them to 'My
Designs.' - a formidable task if I have 20 designs in the cart.
From the user's perspective, there is nothing that communicates the
fact that there are two completely separate storage areas. So if I
create 20 designs, and place them all in the cart, I'm really going
to be in trouble, since once you go to checkout, all items that were
in the cart will suddenly be removed, even though they may have been
sitting there for weeks, while I was waiting to go ahead and make a
purchase (!)
MY SOLUTION
I have proposed to the client that the idea of 'Cart' should not be a
location but rather a state, and that all items should be stored in
one location, within which certain items can be flagged as being 'in
the cart.' This would mean that once you become a registered user
with an account, all items that you might have had in the cart at
that point would then be made part of 'Your Designs' and have a cart
icon nect to them (or some other visualization). The client is
strongly opposed to this, though they still want me to remove all the
bandaids that the current architecture necessitates.
My next move will be to push hard for usability testing (which they
have also not found necessary) and let the users decide. But in the
meantime, I would love to hear back from people on the list about
this conundrum. Is my proposition bad? Does the existing
architecture make any sense whatsoever?
Looking forward to hearing some IAs waxing poetic about ye olde cart...
-Anders
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