GR1 - User and Task Analysis

User Analysis

We have identified two main user classes: students (both undergraduate and graduate) and faculty/staff. To explore our user base, we have interviewed two undergraduate students, one graduate student, and one staff member. Our interview process was conducted face to face, and users were asked a series of multiple choice and open-ended questions.

User Classes

MIT Students
Undergraduate and graduate students who can verify their identity with MIT certificatesat any given university.

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

Needs:
Want to share summer plans with friends
Find others who have overlapping summer plans
View friends’ summer plans

MIT Faculty and Staff:
MIT University affiliates who can verify identity themselves with Kerberos name and/or MIT certificatethemselves in some manner.

Characteristics:
Male and female
22+ years old
Speak English
Computer literate
Work at MITa given university

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

Personae

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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.

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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
Goal: Create a profile on TravelTech and automatically join the MIT network.

Preconditions: User must be logged in via Kerberos or MIT certificate.

Subtasks:

• Enter user information such as summer destination, contact information.
• Upload profile picture.

Constraints: MIT affiliates without certificates must have a valid MIT email addresses and log-in information.

Frequency of Use: Once to create, but allow for periodic updates.

Exceptions:

• User can upload an image that is too large.
• User can input wrong contact information or incorrect format (i.e. malformed email address).

User 3: Undergraduate Junior at MIT
Denise is a 20-year old MIT junior majoring in Chemical Engineering. She enjoys meeting new people and generally having a good time.

• Means of Communication: Denise communicates via texting, GChat, and Facebook. She wants a tool to communicate easily with a group of people. She doesn't like to mass text and hates long email chains. She recalls that during her freshman summer, one of her friends had created a summer mailing list to organize trips, plan parties, and generally keep in contact with their group of friends While she thought the mailing list was a good idea, she remembers several problems that arose. For example, people in the Boston area were accidentally left out of the list at first. Also, event planning sometimes resulted in very long email chains. She emphasized that registering for a new account would deter her from using a new service. Finding and "friending" people is also a deterrence, because Facebook already does that.

• Travel Plans: Denise usually stays at MIT to UROP. She has her living arrangements settled but is looking for an easy means of meeting and contacting other people who are also at MIT over the summer.

• Information Security: Privacy is very important to Denise. She wants to meet other MIT students, and maybe friends of friends, but not random people. She doesn't want her information to be readily available to just anyone on the street. She also wants to be able to filter the people she meets by criteria such as living groups.

User 4: Staff in the MIT Alumni Association
Emily is in her forties and works in the MIT Alumni Association. Her job involves expanding the presence of MIT's alumni network.

• Means of Communication: Emily communicates with MIT alumni and current MIT students mostly via email. She notes that her messages are often times ignored, sometimes because her emails are too long, and sometimes because her target audience is not specific enough. When asked whether she would use a tool that can generate a list of MIT affiliates organized by geographic proximity, she said yes. She indicates that she can organize events for alumni and current students located in a certain geographic area. She emphasized that the tool must be able to send succinct messages and target specific groups. That is, it must have filtering capabilities.

• Information Security: For Emily, privacy is very important. She wants to organize events only for MIT affiliates. Having a system where log-in information is verified via certificates would be very useful.

** Users' names changed for privacy

Task Analysis

Below we have identified a series of tasks a user might perform on the TravelTech system. These tasks range from one-time profile creation to searching for other users in a similar geographic location.

12. Creating a Travel Group

Goal: Specify or search for a group of people with similar travel destinations and times.

Preconditions: User must have created an account, be logged in via MIT certificates , and have inputted his/her own travel information and times.

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• Search and filter people by living groups, interests, major, in addition to their traveling destination and time.
• Identify individuals with similar traveling plans via a map of the world.
• Star friends.

Constraints: None.

Frequency of Use: Every time that the wants to plan a new trip, one to four times a year.

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• User can filter incorrectly on a map due to inadequate zooming features.
• User may create a group and want to change aspects of it later.

32. Messaging a Travel Group

Goal: Send a short message , limited to 140 characters, to a group of users in a Travel Group.

Preconditions: User must be have created an account, be logged in via MIT certificates , and have an existing Travel Group.

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Frequency of Use: Up to multiple times per day.

Exceptions:

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• User may send it to the wrong recipients.

43. Inputting Summer Plans

Goal: User enters his/her general summer plans into the web interface, which will allow other users in the group to view these plans.

Preconditions: The user must have created an account and logged in. Before completing this task, the user needs to know his/her summer plans. This task should only need to be performed once or a few times (if the user's summer plans change) for one particular season, so efficiency is not of utmost importance (but still a concern to be kept in mind).

Subtasks: Click the "my profile" button, click the "edit profile" button, enter changes, click the "save changes" button

• Access profile page
• Enter and save changes

Exceptions:

• The user could mistakenly enter incorrect information, so he/she should be able to easily change or undo these actions.

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• A lost network connection.

5. Advertising / Bulletin4. Searching for Roommates

Goal: On the bulletin page, users can advertise within the group for specific needs (i.e., "Roommate wanted"). This could also be a place where users make day-to-day plans with other group membersa roommate.

_Preconditions:_The user must have created an account and logged in. He/she would also need to know specific details regarding what he/she is advertising or looking for. This task could be performed often (even multiple times in one session) and by many users, so efficiency and easy learnability are essential.

Subtasks: Click the "bulletin" button

• Access bulletin from any page

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• Posting to bulletin
• Viewing previous postings
• Reply to previous postings

Exceptions:

• As with many other operations, the user could enter incorrect information, so an undo/edit operation would be necessary.

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• A user posts an advertisement on the bulletin that is claimed by another user soon thereafter, but if the advertisement is not taken down, then other users may still think that the item is available.

65. Profile to Publish Information

Goal: The goal is for the user to submit or change their personal information displayed on his/her profile and maintained in the database.

Preconditions: The user must have created an account and be logged in with an MIT certificate.

Subtasks: Click the "my profile" button, click the "edit my profile" button, change any of the fields by clicking the field and using the keyboard (name, age, year, major, phone number, address, summer plans), click the "save changes" button.Exceptions:

• Access profile from any page
• Edit and save changes

Exceptions:

• If the user enters the wrong information, the user can

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• edit again and redo the process.

7. Viewing the Map6. Find Nearby Students

Goal: The goal is for the user to be able to view an interactive map that displays locations of other students

Preconditions: The user must be have created an account and be logged in with an MIT certificate.

Subtasks: Click the "view map" button

• Access map from any page, click and drag the mouse / scroll wheel to move the map and zoom, respectively.
• Different users travel plans will be displayed on the map.

Exceptions:

• If no other users have inputted travel plans, the user may think that the feature is broken.

87. Searching for Schedule Overlap

Goal: The goal is for the user to be able to find who has overlap with his/her schedule and where/when that overlap is

Preconditions: The user must be have created an account and be logged in with an MIT certificate , and have previously inputted summer plans.Subtasks: Click the “view schedules” button and a new page will open with each location in the user’s travel plan represented with an expandable tab. The user can click to open each location in the trip and see other students planning to be in that same location at the same time.