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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.*
- Means of communication. This user mainly communicates with friends and acquaintances via text messaging or email. When making immediate plans with friends, he often calls them directly. He is not a huge fan of other social media outlets, but "would use something that's a completely new service, or if I was given some sort of incentive to sign up."
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- Travel plans. John generally makes travel plans independently (i.e., without consulting friends) or with the aid of his parents. He says, "I wouldn't go out of my way to find someone else who was going to the same place, but if I did know of anyone who was, either specifically or through a mutual friend, then I would try to coordinate our travel plans." John is not aware of his friends' summer plans, though he and several of his friends are still in the process of making them.
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- Information security. Internet security is something that John values; he shares his personal details (phone number, home address, etc.) with only his close friends. He wouldn't mind sharing some broader personal information, such as his email address or general summer plans, with the general MIT community. However, he feels strongly about keeping any personal information away from the reaches of the general public. Most of John's personal information on Facebook is kept private, and he is not a highly active Facebook user. He has also never used Twitter or other social media applications.
User 2: M.Eng. Student at MIT
Mark is a 22-year old student in his 5th year working on his M.Eng. project in course 6. He has an extremely active social life and besides going out multiple nights a week with friends, he helps run a thriving music blog. Mark tends to spend his summers traveling to different cities in the U.S. to visit friends he’s made over the years at different colleges.*
- Means of communication: Mark relies heavily on his phone and email to keep in touch with those close to him. Although he has Facebook
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- account, “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.
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- 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.
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- 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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