GR1 - Project Proposal and Analysis

Who We Are

• Tara Krishnan
• Carlo Biedenharn
• Evan Moore

The Problem We're Solving

• College tourists often have trouble finding events/activities to participate in or visiting popular areas/picture spots on the day they visit in the surrounding area.
• College tourists may not have access to current students in the university for inquiries regarding more specific aspects of life at the university.
• Tour Guides have to spend time repeatedly answering common questions from tourists which detracts time from the tour.
• Tour Guides forget interesting questions they were asked during longer tours

User Analysis

Tour Guides

The tour guide would like more feedback from the tourists. They feel like things would go more smoothly if tourists asked more questions, rather than just having to go straight through their own script. More feedback would allow more talking points for the guide as they go through the tour, rather than their having to fill up the empty time. For large groups, guides would like to ensure that everyone's questions and needs are met, especially those in the back of the group. They would also like to be able to facilitate ways of providing answers to tourists' questions that they do not know the answer to (e.g. refer them to someone else, how they can find out the information, etc.)

Goals/Needs

• Receive more feedback from the tourists
• Encourage/facilitate more questions from tourists
• Have ways to facilitate tourists getting answers to questions they themselves may not know the answer to

Tourists

We define tourists as those who visit colleges and attend a college tour.

1. Academic Tourist

This tourist is interested in learning more about the academic side of student life. He is visiting other top schools in the area and therefore he is interested in what the college he is visiting is like compared to other colleges. He's interested in learning more about students in his intended major and what their coursework is like. If he knew of other events on campus, such as student expos, activity fairs, etc., he would be interested in attending.  He'd also be interested in going to see some of the labs that students within his intended major work in, and what kind of research they do.

Goals/Needs

• Looking at comparisons between the colleges he is visiting
• Connect with other students in his intended major
• Find out about events held that day on campus
• Visit labs of students within his intended major

2. Story Tourist

This tourist is interested in learning more about student life on campus. She is interested in visiting some of the dorms on campus to get a feel of dorm life and culture. She is interested in hearing more interesting stories about the college and its student culture. If she knew of other events on campus she would also be interested in attending. She is interested in questions ranging from general college stats (how many people go here, etc.) to questions that were more obscure (who did the artwork here, how long etc.). 

Goals/Needs

• Visit dorms on campus and get a feel of dorm life
• Find out more interesting stories about the college and its campus life
• FInd out about events held that day on campus
• Find out general stats about the college
• Find out answers to questions unique to college's culture and location

3. Parent tourist 

Their child is a prospective student for the college. She would be interested in hearing about the different activities on campus that her kid could potentially get involved in. She would have also been interested in attending events on campus if she knew about them. Interested generally in making sure that her kid's needs/questions about college life are met and what the colleges she is visiting are like compared to each other and compared to other colleges for her kid.

Goals/Needs

• Hearing more about activities students are involved in
• Find out about events held that day on campus
• Interested in making sure her kid's questions are answered and their needs would be met if they attended
• Looking at the comparison between the colleges she's visiting

4. General Visitor

This tourist is not touring the college for college life and is not a prospective student. They are touring the college in a queue of tourist attractions in the city. Would have liked to see more of the campus, including the college architecture, and some of the libraries.

Goals/Needs

• See more of the campus and college architecture
• Visit some of the college's libraries

Tourist Office

The tourist office currently matches a tour guide to a tour group as first come, first serve. They would be interested in providing better matches and a method or organizing which tour guide gets which tours. They would also be interested in efficient methods of keeping track of the feedback they receive from tour guides and tourists.

Goals/Needs

• Better methods of matching and organizing tour guides to tour groups. 
• Efficient methods of tracking the feedback and information they receive from tourists and guides. 

Going Forward

Our future task analysis and approach to the project from here on out will more than likely focus more on the story tourist group and the tourist guides. The goals/interests of both these user groups are the least aligned with our own personal interests. The academic tourist group's goals/needs may be to similar to our own interests. The general visitor's goals/needs either cannot be solved by a UI or else can be addressed if we focus our attention on the goals/needs of other user groups. The parent tourist group's interests either overlapped with the story tourists or academic tourists, or were entirely dependent on whether their child's needs were met (which is hard to achieve through a UI unless the child is in the story tourist group). We also felt as though the story tourist's needs are the least met during college visits/tours, and would be the most interesting to tackle through the UI. Regarding the tourist office and story tourists pair versus the tourist guide and story tourists pair, we felt as though the needs of the tourist guide were most compatible with the needs of the story tourist, and that the collective problem of tacking both their needs through a UI would be fun to take on.