Neighbor Library

A little free library inventory system. The map tells you a book box exists. This tells you what's in it.

Design prototype, ICS 225. Nothing here works, and that's the assignment.

Clip art of a little free library box on a post

Click through it

Start on the public home page and walk the whole thing. Every screen has little numbered dots on it. Click one and it tells you why that part is built the way it is.

There's a hidden settings drawer on every page, the small circle in the bottom right or the ? key. It turns the dots off, makes them louder, and jumps to any page in the set.

Start at the home page

Or just read it

All 102 notes in one page, in reading order, numbered to match the dots. Each entry links out to the screen it's about.

Print it with ctrl-P and all the prototype chrome drops out, so it comes out as a plain document.

Read the design notes

The 27 design pages

Six public screens, five account screens, five emails, five curator screens, three flows, the honor system page, the cursor set, plus these notes. The assignment asks for at least twenty.


Two roles, no staff

A curator keeps one box and holds the only kind of account in the system. A passerby is everybody else, with no account, no name and no history. There's no staff tier, no moderator, and no organization behind any of it.

Everything runs on the honor system. No late fees, no due dates, no borrowing limits, nothing to suspend. That's a decision with consequences all over the design, and it's argued out on how this works.

design prototype, nothing here actually works. read the reference
Prototype settings

0 notes on this page. h hides them, ? opens this.



Full written reference