GR1 - User and Task Analysis

User Analysis

User Classes

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Students of the MIT Community

Undergraduate community - undergraduate and graduate students who can verify their identity with MIT certificates.

Characteristics:
Male and Female
18-25 years old
Speak English
Computer literate
Don’t want to register (MIT certificates)
Are concerned about privacy

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Needs:
Want to plan summer events geared toward MIT students
Want to view undergraduate/graduate summer plans

Personae

Users' names changed for privacy
User 1: Undergraduate Sophomore at MIT
John is a twenty-year-old college sophomore who is, at this point, unsure of his summer plans. He is studying Management Science (Course 15), and hopes to be working in New York or Boston this summer and/or next summer. He is from a secluded part of St. Louis, and enjoys the privacy of a humble Midwestern town. John has a passion for sports and music; in his free time, he enjoys playing basketball and guitar. As an MIT student, he is relatively technologically savvy, though has no sort of programming / software design experience. His main uses of his computer are browsing the Internet and word processing.

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Means of communication: Mark relies heavily on his phone and email to keep in touch with those close to him. Although he has Facebook acccount, “he’s not very into it” and “doesn’t check it too regularly.” If our service was provided as a standalone website, Mark wouldn’t sign up because he doesn’t want another account/site that he wouldn’t check. He also was very clear that he didn’t want a service spamming his email with periodic updates, even if they were relevant to him. If anything, he wouldn’t mind some form of integration with another service which would save him time in signing up and checking for updates.
Travel plans: Mark doesn’t have a consistent way to inform his friends of his summer travel plans. While Mark makes his plans independently, he expressed interest in using such a service because he believes it’s extremely important to know at least a few people no matter where you are.
Information security: Mark keeps most of his personal information private on Facebook and shared parallel concerns about who would be able to see his summer travel plans. He says that “I would only want my friends to be able to see them” but wouldn’t mind if that group were defined as his Facebook friends. In that light, he stressed some form of Facebook integration that would allow access to users’ Facebook friends list.

Task Analysis

1. Registration and Joining a Group

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