GR1 - Task Analysis

Stephen Chang, Sarah Han, Samvaran Sharma

User analysis

Listed below are three different types of people who might use BrackeTracker.  We interviewed three people, each representing one of our three different personas:

• The Manager
  • The manager has coordinated a variety of tournaments, both small scale and medium scale tournaments (~10 participants and ~35 participants respectively).  He is most experienced in running small tournaments, being the go-to guy with his friends for setting up brackets for tournaments that take only a few hours to complete.  He has run a handful of medium sized tournaments for larger groups, but is by no means an expert.  In the medium sized tournament, the hardest aspect of managing and running the tournament was figuring out the tournament structure and generating the matches.  With that many teams, there were many different possible tournament styles: single elimination, double elimination, round-robin, etc.  Because of the unusual conditions of the tournament, three-player matches (1v1v1) instead of two-player matches (1v1), he decided that the simplest, yet still fair, tournament structure was a round-robin tournament with one player having a bye to the second round.  At each stage of the tournament he had to manually generate the next set of round robin matches.  The small scale tournament was a simpler, single-elimination bracket.  This smaller tournament was much more well defined and as a result much easier to maintain.  Using a simple whiteboard, players would write down the winner of each match after it was played.  
  • Lessons Learned: 
    • Generation of a bracket is often difficult without prior knowledge
    • Tedious to have to generate all next set of rounds for large numbers of participants (especially in round robin tournaments)
    • Updating winners/scores easy under certain conditions (small scale tournament with few participants and on a small time scale)
    • Running a longer tournament single-handed takes a lot of time
    • Different set of difficulties in running small and large tournaments.
• The Player
  • The player is always up for a tournament among friends.  Whether it is ping-pong or pool, the player is ready to show off his skills and hopes to end up the winner.  He travels in different circles, spending his free time between his co-workers, college friends, and dance buddies, which sometimes results in participating in multiple tournaments at once.  He needs to keep track of his scores, report them to his friend in charge, and find out who his next opponent is, but this can get confusing at times.  Being a busy guy in multiple tournaments means having to remember multiple sets of scores and names all while trusting that his friend in charge will spot any score discrepancies and constantly update him on the tournament status.
  • Lessons Learned:
    • Needs a way to keep track of different tournaments
    • Wants to be able to easily view his record
    • Would rather not have to rely on word-of-mouth conversations, emails, and text-messages for updates (which sometimes get lost in his memory/inbox)

• Manager/Player
  • The Manager/Player (so called because she typically both manages tournaments, as well as playing in them. These are typically smaller, more impromptu tournaments between friends. Usually she turns to Google Docs to keep track of the tournament, and although it works sufficiently well, it require more setup and maintenance than she'd like. For instance, she is now the point person for creating the Google Doc, inviting others to view the tournament, and prodding those falling behind in their scheduled games to get their games finished. Doing this again and again can get tiring, especially since this Manager/Player wants to play her games in a timely manner as well. 
  • Lessons Learned:
    • The Manager/Player would really love to have a largely automated solution that would require little extra effort on her part as the creator of the tournament
    • She's not looking for any amazingly advanced features, but rather a simple yet effective setup that doesn't require everyone to make new accounts and receive invites, and allows everyone to log in quickly.
    • Inviting people to games should be as simple as emailing or sharing a link or code to anyone you'd like to be in the tournament (ie. you don't need to know their Gmail addresses or be friends with them on Facebook)

Our general demographic can be very varied. As such, the following broad user profile characteristics represent our potential Players, Managers, as well as Manager/Players:

• Age, gender, culture, language:
  • The user base can span any age, gender, or culture. The website is mainly geared towards an English-speaking audience, but is not heavily dependent on large quantities of text, so non-English users will likely still be able to use the site without much hassle.
• Education (literacy/ numeracy):
  • Does not require any significant advancement in literacy or numeracy.
• Physical Limitations:
  • There are no special physical prerequisites - as long as the user can use a computer keyboard and mouse effectively, he or she should face no problems.
• Computer Experience:
  • Must have basic proficiency with computers.
• Motivation, Attitude:
  • People who are excited and motivated about the tournament at hand, and want the administrative work cut out!
• Domain experience:
  • No previous tournament management experience needed per se; however, familiarity with basic tournament types (elimination, round robin, etc.) will allow you to set up the tournament faster.
• Application experience:
  • No previous application experience necessary.
• Work Environment:
  • This website is appropriate for almost any environment, from the workplace to a casual group of friends, to an extracurricular club, and more...
• Relationships with others:
  • Since this sets up tournaments between friends, members need to be in email contact. However, other than a one-time email inviting people to the tournament, there are no other essential emails that need to be sent. Therefore, a tournament can be executed between people who are never in the same room (eg. if you were putting together an online chess tournament).

Task analysis

There are a few main tasks involved with the Bracketracker.  These tasks include:

• Create a tournament
• Update a tournament
• View a tournament
• Search for and Join a tournament
• Manage a tournament