| E-Business Patterns |
Result of the OOP 2002-Session
Please find below the abstract of the session, here you will find details (in German only).
E-Business applications are challenging for designer: They have to support the user, so she finds what she is looking for and furthermore they have to simplify the shopping process.
In the first part of the session some patterns are presented, which deal with the domain of navigation. The second part of the session uses interactive techniques – pattern mining – for detecting and collecting more patterns in the domain of e-business applications.
This page has been set up to show the results of the pattern mining part, which lasts for 40 minutes only, but which is really impressive!!
Some of the mined patterns have already a name, a problem statement, forces and a partial solution. Others have e.g. the problem statement only. Some of the proto-patterns might hide a couple of patterns, other could be combined to a single one and again others might (after revising) not even be patterns. The proto-patterns are separated using ‘***’.
When translating I tried to clean up things a little bit without changing the original contents. Furthermore I couldn’t resist to comment some things – please find my comments in italics. Names with a concluding question mark are the names I invented while translating. I tried to give each of the proto-patterns a name, because it’s easier to refer to a specific one by name than by text only.
If the proto-pattern specifies an author, this means that these authors volunteered for revising this proto-pattern (leading it from a proto to a pattern without proto ;-)
Well and one last word: I didn’t assemble this page with respect to the mined patterns. So the information might be overwhelming…
Problem:
Explore the web jointly with members of the helpdesk team
Forces:
***
Problem:
Different browser use different presentation styles. Or even worse the site doesn’t work properly because e.g. Java Script isn’t enabled, or Opera or Mozilla is used. Depending on the provider it’s hard – if not impossible – to install the plug-in.
Forces:
Solution
***
Problem:
The menu structure is hard to follow and understand. There is much too much information per page.
***
Problem:
It is difficult to orientate yourself if the URL doesn’t change in dynamically generated pages. This happens most often in portals (context???). If you try to go to that page using a generic entry like a bookmark or using a search engine either this page isn’t reachable, or the presentation of the page is incomplete because the context is missing.
Forces:
***
Problem:
The user mistrusts the provider: what kind of (secret) information is stored about the user? The user doesn’t know what kind of information is stored in cookies or even worse on the server.
Forces:
Solution:
***
AUTHOR: klug@fh-swf.de, www.dr-baumann.de
Problem:
The user wants to make repeatable searches, e.g. weekly search for open positions or real estates.
Forces:
Solution:
***
Problem:
How can I find what I’m looking for? For example if the user wants to take a look at the price list of Atelco (www.atelco.de ??not sure if the site is correct) takes too long when following the starting page.
Forces:
Solution:
Isn’t the whole thing related to URL AFFORDANCE??
***
AUTHOR: dabbous@saxess.com
Problem:
A search often leads to a lot of un-relevant hits.
Solution:
***
AUTHOR: stefan.hammerer@ecosoft-gmbh.de, dabbous@saxess.com, klug@fh-swf.de
Problem:
How to provide a good overview of the domain, all pages over all categories? (à There was this picture on the flip chart, which looked like a hierarchical org chart, or rather a tree)
Forces:
Solution:
It seems this one is related to the following COMBINE SEARCH AND NAVIGATION
***
AUTHOR: dabbous@saxess.com
Problem:
Searching and navigating are separated. The result of a search is a collection of links, which doesn’t help any further for a follow-up search.
Solution:
This seems to be related to SERACH REFINEMENT.
***
Problem:
How to provide the maximum information about the products without overwhelming the user?
Forces:
Solution:
This pattern seems to be related to FOCUSED INFORMATION written by Andreas Rueping, published in the Proceedings of EuroPLoP ’98, by UKV Konstanz, 1999, p. 291.
***
Problem:
How to convey a feel of the product, so the user knows how it looks (shape, color, size, etc), what its nature is and what kind of quality it provides?
Forces:
Solution:
***
Problem:
I have been around a couple of days ago, but where has this interesting thing disappeared to? (related to URL AFFORDANCE and REPEATABLE SEARCH)
Solution:
***
Problem:
The server annoys the user with repetitive dialogs. For example the server asks if you want to install a cookie and although you deny the server doesn’t stop asking.
***
Problem:
The site requires a specific browser configuration (flash, java script), but the user doesn’t want to activate these things. (This is related to SAME LOOK and HONEST INFORMATION)
Solution:
***
Problem:
The user can’t navigate to all pages using the menu. She has to navigate through different (un-interesting) pages.
Solution:
***
Problem:
Invalid session after a timeout of the internet connection.
Solution:
Discussion:
The browser configuration might not support cookies. URL-rewrite might require a lot of effort if the page is dynamically generated and the URL doesn’t respect URL AFFORDANCE.
***
AUTHOR: klug@fh-swf.de, andreas.schoerk@info.de
Problem:
The site requires too many clicks to work even on routine tasks.
Forces:
Solution:
***
Solution:
***
Problem:
The user wants to send a representative in the shop. So the surrogate or proxy should be allowed to act as if she would be the original user.
Solution:
***
Problem:
Accept legally valid signed forms. (SigG)
***
Problem:
How to efficiently pay small amounts of money.
Solution:
Consequences:
No transparent interaction anymore, because the user has to switch from the internet to the phone.