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GR1 - User and Task Analysis

User Analysis

Analyst’s Notebook (ANB) has an extremely wide range of users. The representative users that we interviewed are from the sectors of academia (MIT), industry (IBM), and military (U.S. Army), but all were working on problems related to government and international development. These problems include:

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The users emphasized that efficiency is the most important aspect of UI design for them. They complained that ANB's UI requires too many clicks and mouse movements to perform simple, common tasks. Users were very enthusiastic about the use of sliders (rather than buttons) to adjust parameters, such as time or resources. The overall movement is toward a more efficient, intuitive, slick design with primary emphasis on visualization. In other words, the ANB interface is shifting toward the younger class of users.

Task Analysis

With the back-end and database support provided by IBM, we will focus on designing effective ways to visualize data in a way that allows users to see relationships between large amounts of data efficiently. Standard The user should be able to change the values of one datapoint, and see how that affects the entire visualization in a meaningful way. Our users have expressed a need for this to replace the tedious methods of querying and optimization that they currently use. Standard data visualization tools are available from open-source libraries such as processing.js. We will select a few visualization methods (e.g. web, map, graph) to focus on, geared toward understanding the data sets for WiFi in Africa. The users' main high-level tasks include:

1. Seeing relationships within/between data setsOptimization: The overarching common goal among users of ANB is to discern and understand complex relationships within data sets. This is one of the users' main goals in analyzing data. Users want to optimize and manipulate certain data given certain restraints. It is similar to querying a database, but expressed in a more visual way.
2. Manipulation: It should be easy for users to modify one aspect of the visualization and see the effects in realtime. Manipulation: Users  Users need to see information in the most efficient way, and thus need the ability to manipulate and interact with data visualizations. 
   1. This can include tasks like dragging and dropping, zooming, and panning, as well as changing the method of visualization (e.g. web, map, graphic).
   2. Optimization: This is one of the users' main goals in analyzing data. Users want to optimize and manipulate certain data given certain restraints.  It is similar to querying a database, but expressed in a more visual way.
   3. Realtime cause-and-effect: The user should be able to change the values of one datapoint, and see how that affects the entire visualization in a meaningful way.  Our users have expressed a need for this to replace the tedious methods of querying and optimization that they currently use.
3. Sharing and collaborating on visualizations: Analysts would like to be able to share their data and visualizations with superiors and co-workers as well as collaborate on certain projects. Collaborating: Currently, users described collaboration in ANB as clumsy. This user task is one of the main motivations behind creating a web-based application.Collaborating: Users  Users often need to annotate data, making notes both for themselves and to share with others. They will need the ability to insert text comments, highlight parts of the visualization, etc.
4. Sharing: Analysts would like to be able to share their data and visualizations with superiors and co-workers.
   1. Data Sharing: It  It should be easy for users to choose the source of data for a given visualization, as well as to share their data sets with other users.
   2. Visualization Sharing: Users  Users should be able to share their visualizations easily without having to export and import large amounts of information.

Throughout the semester, we will be in communication with our representative users to pinpoint the UI features that will be most useful to them.

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