• Created by Unknown User (niwen@mit.edu), last modified by Unknown User (qlong@mit.edu) on Feb 26, 2012 16:14

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
  • Age excepted, same characteristics as high school students

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, and 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 coming and going, it is hard to sustain a long conversation about the reality of MIT life. Also, students unable to visit MIT, particularly international admits, will get little to no chance at interacting with actual MIT students. Our site will provide an efficient interface for prefrosh to get in touch with current MIT students who are willing to share their personal experiences.


Task Analysis

Our website is intended as a 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 associated with 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
  • Delete story

The purpose of this task is for current MIT students to share their experiences with regards to a particular aspect of MIT life.

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 a story for the wrong dorm or accidentally mark that people may not ask follow-up questions, in which case they are able to delete the story and create a new one.

A potential use case would be students submitting malicious stories about other dorms. We may include an option to report stories for spam or abuse, or simply have an option to notify the webmasters/moderators to remove the story manually.

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.  

The 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.

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1 Comment

  1. Edward Oscar Benson

    We would like you to find another problem to target for your project.

    While your project idea would be useful to the MIT community, it doesn't fit the goals and requirements of this class with regards to offering a good opportunity to practice UI design. We are not looking for projects whose primary focus is on information delivery (mostly read-only) or whose primary interaction is simple create-read-update-delete wrappers around a database.

    Please think about a problem that is a stretch from your standpoint: a user population entirely unlike yourselves, or the problem of implementing something in a mobile form factor. Bias your search toward user problems that lend themselves well to the design and evaluation of an interesting, non-trivial user interface.

    Feel free to email me with your ideas. Having met with you I know that you have the potential to create and follow through with a really good project. You just need to identify one that fits the goals of the course.

    If you're having trouble brainstorming, you can try this exercise: list a number of individuals you interact with but likely don't know much about: the manager of a dining hall, MIT police, an employee at a clothing store, a bus driver who runs the CT1 route. Now pick one that you imagine might have some interesting problems and interview them to see what their perspective is. Hunt for problems whose answer might lie in a good interface design rather than a good curation of information or the construction of a large system.