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- Means of communication. This user mainly communicates with friends and acquaintances via text messaging or email. When making immediate plans with friends, he often calls them directly. He is not a huge fan of other social media outlets, but "would use something that's a completely new service, or if I was given some sort of incentive to sign up."
- Travel plans. John generally makes travel plans independently (i.e., without consulting friends) or with the aid of his parents. He says, "I wouldn't go out of my way to find someone else who was going to the same place, but if I did know of anyone who was, either specifically or through a mutual friend, then I would try to coordinate our travel plans." John is not aware of his friends' summer plans, though he and several of his friends are still in the process of making them.
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- Information security: Mark keeps most of his personal information private on Facebook and shared parallel concerns about who would be able to see his summer travel plans. He says that “I would only want my friends to be able to see them” but wouldn’t mind if that group were defined as his Facebook friends. In that light, he stressed some form of Facebook integration that would allow access to users’ Facebook friends list.
Task Analysis
1. #Registration and Joining a Group
Goal: Create a profile on TravelTech and automatically join the MIT network.
Preconditions: User must be logged in via Kerberos or MIT certificate.
Subtasks:
- Enter user information such as summer destination, contact information.
- Upload profile picture.
Exceptions: - User can upload an image that is too large.
- User can input wrong contact information or incorrect format (i.e. malformed email address).
2. Messaging Your Group
3. Inputting Summer Plans
Goal: User enters his/her general summer plans into the web interface, which will allow other users in the group to view these plans.
Preconditions: The The user must have created an account and logged in. Before completing this task, the user needs to know his/her summer plans. This task should only need to be performed once or a few times (if the user's summer plans change) for one particular season, so efficiency is not of utmost importance (but still a concern to be kept in mind).
Subtasks: Click the "my profile" button, click the "edit profile" button, enter changes, click the "save changes" button
Exceptions: The user could mistakenly enter incorrect information, so he/she should be able to easily change or undo these actions. Another exception could arise from a lost network connection.
4. Advertising / Bulletin
Goal: On the bulletin page, users can advertise within the group for specific needs (i.e., "Roommate wanted"). This could also be a place where users make day-to-day plans with other group members.
_Preconditions: The _The user must have created an account and logged in. He/she would also need to know specific details regarding what he/she is advertising or looking for. This task could be performed often (even multiple times in one session) and by many users, so efficiency and easy learnability are essential.
Subtasks: Click the "bulletin" button from any page; posting to bulletin: click the "add posting" button, edit information regarding the posting (i.e., description of item being advertised), click the "post to bulletin" button; viewing previous postings: scroll up and down page to see all postings, click on an individual posting title to see specific details
Exceptions: As with many other operations, the user could enter incorrect information, so an undo/edit operation would be necessary. Another point of confusion could arise when a user posts an advertisement on the bulletin that is claimed by another user soon thereafter, but if the advertisement is not taken down, then other users may still think that the item is available.
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