...
As current MIT students who help out during CPW and REX, we have all had prefrosh come into our living groups who are curious about each dorm’s particular culture. However, with the large number of prefrosh passing and going, it is hard to sustain a long conversation about the reality of MIT life. Also, for those students unable to visit MIT, particularly internationals, they will get little to no chances at interacting with actual MIT students. Our site will provide an efficient interface for current MIT students , who are willing to share their personal experiences, and prefrosh to get in touch with each other.
Task Analysis
Our website is intended as home-browsing, leisurely activity. Thus, all of the below tasks will likely be performed indoors at a desk, on a computer, and the individual tasks have no time constraints and will likely be performed about once a week during the times that high school students are making their decisions (mid-March to the end of April about MIT, then June about dorms) and the MIT students are offering their personal experiences (potentially all year round, but with spikes during CPW and REX).
1. Browse information (Pichu/Pikachu/Raichu)
- Filter map by category (later functionality)
- View i3 videos
- Read MIT student stories
- Browse dorm pictures and stats (cost, number of doubles, etc.)
- direct comparison of different dorm features (like cost)
Students are browsing information because they want to learn more about the dorms and about MIT student life in general. We assume the user has basic understanding of colleges (particularly dorm structure) and browsing websites.
Before reaching the browsing functionality, the homepage will include a brief blurb about how MIT Housing and dorm assignments work. This information will be sufficient for the user to begin browsing.
The task is learned by trial and error. In terms of errors, a student could click on the wrong information and get confused about how to go back. In general, getting confused by the information on the website and how to navigate it is the biggest way this task could go wrong, so it’s important that we design the browsing functionality to be very intuitive.
Part of this browsing involves reading the personal experiences that MIT students have posted, so in that sense the students here are interacting indirectly with those MIT students, and the success of that feature of this task depends on task 2.
2. Submit advice/personal story (current students)
precondition: logged in
-input story at a particular location
-select whether or not others can ask questions about this story
-if “yes”, then they are allowing others to email them
-submit story
The purpose of this task is for current MIT students to share their experiences with regards to a particular aspect of MIT life. We will assume the user is a current student of MIT(this will be verified by certificate login) who has personal knowledge of student life. This task of story input and submission will be easily learned by trying it through an intuitive interface. There will be a preview feature that allows the user to proofread what s/he has written before final submission to check for errors.
3. Ask a question (prefrosh/high schooler)
-input question and email about a particular story that a current MIT student has posted
-CAPTCHA
-submit question to the MIT student
Prefrosh and prospective students want to be able to communicate with current MIT students about their actual experiences. They will be able to do so by filling out a form linked to each MIT student story post that will email the question to the particular MIT student who wrote the post. The user doesn’t need to know anything other than have a question about housing to direct to the MIT student.