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DiscoverMIT - GR1

>> Back to DiscoverMIT

Team members: Stephanie Chang, Qian Long, Isabella Lubin

User Analysis

We have two main sources of user populations: high school students (who may or not have been accepted to MIT already) and current MIT students. The analysis for each general population, and classes within those populations, is below.

High School Students

Characteristics:
  • 14-18 years old
  • About evenly male and female
  • Diverse ethnic backgrounds and countries of origin (but basic proficiency in English)
  • Academically motivated and accomplished
  • Proficient with technology

Pichu is applying to colleges. He is interested in MIT, but would like to learn more about its culture and academic opportunities. Pichu is in many ways similar to Pikachu (below), although his general focus is likely more on the academic opportunities at MIT. When we expand our website to include more information about other features of MIT life (such as academic programs and virtual campus tours), he will be much more likely to use the website.

Pikachu has been offered admission into MIT, and needs to differentiate MIT from other colleges. Before making a final decision, Pikachu would like to gather more information on financial cost, academic programs, research opportunities, and student life.
>> We interviewed one prefrosh who reported browsing a number of different sites about campus life (i3 videos on YouTube, main MIT site). She wanted to be able to get advice from current MIT students about housing and academics.

Raichu has accepted MIT’s offer of admission and is preparing for the fall. While Raichu may have come to CPW, he was busy attending so many free food events that he was not able to adequately compare dorms. Raichu is worried about ranking dorms and would like to find the dorm that best fits his personality. In addition, Raichu has started to consider potential majors and scout the surrounding neighborhood for good restaurants, but all the information he wants is scattered across multiple websites and he is finding it hard to keep track of everything.
>> We interviewed several current freshmen (the closest to this user population as possible right now).  They all reported a lot of difficulty finding information about dorms when deciding among them for their preference list, and difficulty using the Housing website as well.  Additionally, they said that over CPW they weren’t able to interact much with current MIT students or to get a good feel for which dorms would be best for them.  Several of them reported that they selected the wrong dorm when they first came to MIT and then subsequently entered the re-adjustment lottery once they had a chance to talk to more MIT students.

MIT Students

Characteristics:
  • 18-23 years old
  • otherwise same as above

Ash wants to share his MIT experience with newcomers so that they may get the most out of MIT. He wants to impart his wisdom to the young’uns, warn them of perils, inform them of the best locations on campus.
>> 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.)
  • View direct comparison of different dorm features (cost, demographics, rooms)

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 exploration. 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 indirectly interacting with MIT students, and the success of that feature of this task depends on task 2.

2. Submit advice or personal stories (Ash)

  • Precondition: logged in with MIT certificates
  • Post 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
  • Preview story 
  • 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.

The preview feature allow the user to proofread what s/he has written before final submission to check for errors.  Nonetheless, a user could still submit his story for the wrong dorm or accidentally say that others cannot ask questions about a story and intend to say yes.  Other things that could go wrong with the site includes users who submit malicious stories about different dorms.

3. Ask a question (Pichu/Pikachu/Raichu)

  • Input question and email about a particular story that a current MIT student has posted
  • 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 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.

The preview feature before final submission will allow the user to proofread. Also, a confirmation email will be submitted to the user’s email that s/he has entered for error checking.

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