Everyday UI: Brown MyPrint App
Interface Design
When I got to Brown this semester and found out that there was a software for printing, I was initially skeptical. I was used to the old system and didn’t want to have to learn a new interface.
However, I was in for a pleasant surprise: the first time I tried to use the web app, it was simple and intuitive. The drag-and-drop features were helpful, and each step was self-explanatory.
It was not until I actually tried to print a few copies of a handout that I noticed a glaring, time consuming, and incredibly unintuitive defect in the new printing app. Namely: there is no way to collate pages.
When a user tries to print multiple copies of an ordered document, they must manually sort the pages if they want to retain the order. As the number of copies or pages increases, the sort becomes exponentially harder (in fact, a naive version of the sorting process takes O(n*k) operations to complete, where n is the number of copies printed and k is the number of pages per copy. If you want to learn more about what that means, take the class for which I am printing homework in the above image 😅).
Design Choices
It is not uncommon for printers to have options for collated/uncollated printing. Uncollated printing can be extremely useful when the information in a document is not ordered by page. For example, if the first page of a document has one form while the second page has another, it might be useful to be able to print stacks of each form separately.
However, most printers have a setting to provide users with choice.
Importantly, while in many cases collated/uncollated printing does not matter to users, when it does it can have significant ramifications. Printing with the wrong setting significantly decreases efficiency, and as a result, users are forced to come up with inconvenient workarounds like uploading one file multiple times as opposed to just printing many copies. Memorability and learnability are inherently diminished because workarounds are not part of the app, so users must actively remember to use them.
It is possible that the designers of this web app simply thought that collation would not be necessary for students, but I believe that it is more likely an oversight. The goal of the printing redesign was to make the printing process easier for students to use, but in doing so the designers prevented users from making meaningful choices that would impact their experience.
Printing App Redesign
Fixing the UI for this app is simple. All we need to do is add a checkbox labeled “Collate pages” right below the textbox in which users enter the number of copies they’d like to print, and make the default to collate. This way, in the rare case that a user needs uncollated copies, they will still be able to enable that feature. The majority of users, however, will not need to worry about it.
