*** This project was changed after GR1, we are no longer "FriendTrain" we are now "LunchBunch".  LunchBunch is an Androis app designed to allow users to create lunch events and invite their friends to them.  Users may also browse lunches they have been invited to and either accept them or decline them.  GR2-4 are up-to-date.

User Analysis:

We have identified the following main user classes, but it is possible for a user to belong to more than one of these classes:

Living Group Resident/College Student:

People living in close proximity often share many similar interests and need to perform the same tasks on a regular basis.  For example, college students need to work together on problem sets, go to the grocery store, exercise, or unwind in a social environment.  In any living group, there may be a critical mass of people that are looking to complete the same task at any given time but it’s hard to find out everything that everyone is interested in doing without the risk of being intrusive. This is where FriendTrain comes in handy.  
Living group residents interviewed have expressed interest in coordinating the following tasks:

• Doing homework
• Exercising
• Going to bars/clubs
• Grocery shopping
• Getting/ordering food
• Watching a movie
• Playing video games

In addition, this group of users has expressed a desire to have control over the participants in any particular activity.  That is, they wouldn’t want to go to the movies with just anyone, they would want to be able to specify a group of people in their contacts that they would be willing to go with (and not include people they wouldn’t want to go with).

Working adult:

Users belonging to this class spend upwards of 40hours/week with peers they might not know well enough to contact in a social context, but share similar needs/location.  For example, coworkers might take lunches at similar times but may not have the means to coordinate these activities spontaneously.  
Working adults have expressed interest in:

• Coordinating lunch at work
• Lunches with friends outside of work
• Volunteering for community service, religious institutions
• Happy hour after work

Working adults also expressed a strong preference for setting specific dates and times in which events should occur. They also mentioned that they currently use email to coordinate activities such as lunch while at work, but felt it was tedious to use email because it was not centralized and hard to coordinate a spontaneous group activity.

Parent:

Users belonging to the parent category have children, and therefore have similar necessities.  Taking care of a kid is something a parent struggles with from time to time, and this demographic could benefit greatly from a technology that makes it easy to coordinate tasks quickly.
Parents would use this service for things like:

• Getting lunch with friends/other moms
• Running errands
• Babysitting
• Organizing playdates
• Organizing carpools

The parent class is interesting, because there can be adults who both work and are parents. This indicates a need for our design to have some sort of flexibility to overlap between different user groups.

Task analysis:

The main tasks involved in interaction with the FriendTrain application are:

1. Organizing Contacts
2. Activity Administration
3. Joining Activities
4. Finalizing Activity Details

1. Organizing Contacts

To interact with other users through the application, each user must maintain a list of approved contacts. These contacts may be categorized into groups based on the user’s preferences.

Subtasks

• Find contacts who also have the app
• Organize contacts into groups that the user wants to do activities with

Example: Pierre the college student connects with his friends on the app and organizes them into groups for his fraternity, his closest friends around campus, and his dance group.

2. Activity Administration

The application will allow a user to suggest activities to his/her contacts at any time. These activity suggestions will be broadcast to the designated group of people. The user may indicate a minimum group size or a time limit on organizing any particular activity.

Subtasks

• Identify what activity you want to spontaneously do
• Indicate this activity on the app to a group of contacts
• Await notification of others interested in the same activity
• If enough people are interested in the activity, it is confirmed and awaits finalization

Example: Pierre decides he wants to order food but wants some friends to order with to split the delivery costs. He indicates on the app that he wants to order food and specifies that this notification only go out to his friends on campus. Within the next hour, three of his friends see this notification and respond that they are interested in ordering with Pierre. This is enough people to make ordering food plausible so the application confirms that Pierre and his three friends are going to order food.

3. Joining Activities

Once activities have been suggested, other users who see these suggestions may indicate their interest in participating.

Subtasks

• Browse activities
• Express interest in activities which is then communicated to activity administrator

Example: Pierre’s friend Celine is browsing through the application and notices that Pierre indicated that he wants to order food. She was just thinking that she wanted to order food too! She indicates on the app that she is willing to order food with Pierre.

4. Finalize Activity Details

If an activity suggestion reaches a minimum amount of participants in the allotted time span, it will be confirmed for interested parties. The application will foster communication between this group of people to finalize details.
Subtasks

• Browse confirmed activities
• Communicate with others interested in a particular confirmed activity

Example: Since enough people want to order food with Pierre, the event is confirmed. The friends who responded to Pierre’s notification can communicate with each other to coordinate where they want to order from, where they should meet when the food is delivered, etc.