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Luke is a freshman at college. His parents pay for his tuition and housing and provide him with $300 a month for food and other necessities. Luke wants to keep track of his spending so he always has enough money for food and textbooks and knows if he has any extra money for recreational activities.
We observed college students (especially ones in dorms without dining plans) who are often left with $5 in their bank account and a couple of packs of ramen to last them through the last few days of the month. Several students were observed calling their parents and requesting more money to get them through the weekend - others who have limited resources were seen ordering takeout that they might not be able to afford. The ability to track spending easily would greatly help all of these students - even if it's just a matter of proving to parents that they really do need more money and aren't spending money frivolously.
Parents
Characteristics:
- 40-60 years old
- evenly male and female
- very basic experience with smartphones
- diverse ethnic backgrounds and origins (but basic proficiency with English)
- wide variation of income level
Vader is Luke's 42 year old father. He wants to keep track of his son's spending so he knows where his hard-earned money is going, and if his son asks him for more money he wants to make sure that his son has been responsible with what he's already been given.
Task Analysis
All of the following tasks require the phone to be connected to the internet.
1. Register and log in (Luke and Vader)
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This task is reasonably prone to user error because the user might be constrained by time or distractions when he is entering values for his expenses and budget. Because the user is entering values on a mobile phone, he might additionally mistype a value that can later affect his spending decisions. To account for this, there will be immediate feedback after a user has saved an input so that the user can perform a sanity check to see if he made any gross errors.
3. Ask a question (Pichu/Pikachu/Raichu)
- Input email address and question about a particular student story
- Preview question
- CAPTCHA and 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 story.
4. View Budgets (Luke and Vader)
- View graphs of expenses by category
- Monthly or yearly cumulative views
- View breakdown of expenses by category
The purpose of this task is for the user to view and track his (or another user’s) expenses. The user is assumed to know how to select options and view simple charts before performing the task.
In the case of a budget having been shared with a user who has not already created an account, that user will first be prompted to perform task 1, and will then be able to view the shared budget.
This task can be performed anywhere with a smartphone. This task is likely to be performed a few times a day. In the case of one’s own budget, one is especially likely to view the budget when one is deciding whether or not to make a purchase, so while at a store with somewhat limited time constraints (the user doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on the task and wants to view the budget quickly). Viewing someone else’s budget is a more leisurely activity and would likely happen in the comfort of one’s homeThe preview feature before final submission will allow the user to proofread for errors. On submission, an email containing the question will be sent to both the questioner and the author of the post.