GR1: Analysis 

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h1.

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User Analysis

There are several types of users who will use our product. To detail each persona, we interviewed people from each user group:

-          Jason the Engineer

-          Laura the Project Manager

-          ... the HR Manager

Jason the Engineer

Jason wants to find the colleagues he works with daily. They are sometimes away from their desks at meetings or in break rooms. During those instances, Jason must spend time searching for them around the office, sometimes without success. Jason wants an efficient way to connect with his colleagues in a non-intrusive way. He prefers to be able to set his own privacy settings in the app, so that he has "quiet time" to think through his work. On the other hand, Jason is open to spontaneous meetings with coworkers who share similar work or personal interests. Jason would love to meet new coworkers around the office, especially if they are working on similar projects.

Lessons learned from  the Engineer/Front-line Office Worker

Laura the Project Manager

Laura wants his project team to interact with each other by sharing ideas and receiving feedback. He wants to see how frequently his team members are meeting with each other, and receive notices if one member of his team is working in isolation. Laura recognizes that his team's success depends on getting "buy-in" from marketing, finance, and other groups in the company. Furthermore, his team can improve their technical solution by learning from other engineering teams. As a result, Laura would love for the app to automatically connect his team members with other groups with similar interests. Of course, he want the tool to be efficient, so that his team can still concentrate on finishing project work.

Lessons learned from the Manager

... the HR Manager

Task Analysis

The main tasks performed using our product include:

-          Search for a colleague

-          Enter user profile

-          Spontaneous meeting

-          Real-time visualization of nearby friends

-          View connections between colleagues

The users would be MIT community members, the undergraduate students, graduate students, Post Docs and Professor.

Characteristics

1. Age varies from 18 and above, for both male and female user.
2. English-speaking.
3. Computer literate.
4. Have busy schedules.
5. Are interested in socializing..

Case Studies

1. Tim the 1st Year Grad Student (Age 26).
2. Jeff the 3rd Year Undergrad Student (Age 20).
3. Jermie the 2nd Year Grad Student (Age 25).

1: Tim the 1st Year Graduate Student

Tim is a first year graduate student in the EECS department. He attends classes and lectures, and often has to meet with various Professors, TAs, Lab mates and friends for a variety of activities. He considers himself tech-savvy, but finds certain problems related to locating people and places within the campus annoying. For example, he needed to meet his Graduate Counselor to get an Add/Drop/Status Change form signed; and even though he had emailed, the counselor’s availability was a vague range (i.e. anytime before 5pm). He made several trips down on the same day and only managed to get what he needed after several tries.

2: Jeff the 3rd Year Undergraduate Student

Jeff is a 3rd year undergrad student in the EECS department. He attends classes, lectures, recitations and often needs to meet with Professors, friends, and other groups for various meetings. His primary method for getting contact information is through Facebook or faculty members personal pages. His primary method of contacting others is through online messaging (e-mail, Facebook, Google+, etc.) or text messaging. He also thinks that these communication methods are not always sufficiently fast. He doesn't like the current MIT directory page as it doesn't allow for filtering, but he thinks personal pages al not very helpful either.

3: Jermie the 2nd Year Graduate Student

Jermie is a 2nd year Graduate student in Chemistry Department. He is done with his Qualification Exam, but he still takes some classes and attends lectures and recitations. He is also TA for a Grad Course. He has a huge research group with multiple sub groups in it. In his research group they have a weekly meeting for the entire group and also many small ones where sub groups meet the adviser to give status reports. Because his adviser is a busy person, she has shared her number with all the group members and they give her a call in case urgent discussion is required while she is not around.
Apart from his work, he is interested in working out in gym and has a very social life. Also he happens to be a religious person and goes to church every weekend. He uses Gtalk and phone calls to arrange spontaneous hangouts. He bumps into people sharing his interests at church or other social gatherings that he likes to attend for this very reason. And for discovering new people in his organization MIT he uses MIT People Directory very often, and is very comfortable with it despite the difficult-to-use menus.

Lessons learned

• To locate each other within the same institution, students have to resort to a multitude of resources.
• There indirect methods of contacting people can be time consuming, which is problematic in urgent situations.
• There is no clear way to find out a person’s availability based on his/her current location.
• People who have been part of MIT for a long enough use "work-arounds" to arrange meetings or to discover new people and they have grown to accept these "work-arounds."
• A convenient solution packaged in one easy-to-use UI will enable people to request for availability of a large group in fast and hassle free way and successfully arrange a well organized event or a meeting on a relatively short notice.

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  Task Analysis

The main tasks identified are:

1. Find a friend
2. Add a friend
3. Invite friends to Event/Meeting
4. RSVP to an Event/Meeting Invitation

1: Find a friend

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Goal: Find the location of a colleaguefriend.

Use Case:

1. Select the category of person you are looking for by selecting the interest, department, or group your colleague belongs to.

• At any point you may type in the person's name to narrow your search.

Sub Tasks

1. Open list of friends
2. Enter a name in the "Search" bar
3. Identify Identify and select the person you are looking for .View profile for the selected person.by browsing through the list of search results displayed, and select it by clicking or tapping on the entry
4. View the location for the selected person .on map or as a text

Preconditions:

-          Your colleague has a profile in the system.

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1. User's friend must also use the app
2. User must have the approval from the person he/she is looking for (must be added as friend)

Time constraints: Search must be quick. Info presented must be concise.fast.  

Frequency of use: several Several times a day. 

Enter user profile

Spontaneous meeting

Goal: Get introduced to colleagues who share your similar personal and work interests.

Use Case:

1. You or your colleague enter a public area (e.g. office kitchen, hallway, etc.).
2. You and your colleague are identified as sharing a certain level of similar interests.
3. You and your colleague are notified of your shared interests.
4. You and your colleague are given the option to schedule a conversation at a future time.

Preconditions:

-          You and your colleague are identified as being open to introductions.

-          You and your colleague are not busy during the current timeframe.

Time constraints: Matching must occur in under 30 seconds. Notification should present concise information on your shared interests or connections.

Frequency of use: several times a day, depending on the users preference. 

Real-time visualization of nearby friends

View connections between colleagues: provide introductions via connections

Goal: Show strength of connections between employees based on their interactions.

Use Case:

1. Select a group, such as your project team, friends, or department.
2. View the strength of connections between members in the selected group.
3. View the people (outside the group) who have strong connections with members inside the selected group.
4. Select a person and view their profile and major connections.

Alternative Use Case 1:  Search for a person and be introduced to that person via a mutual connection.

2: Add Friend

Goal: Add a person from institute’s directory to user’s friend list enabling the user to locate that person on a map view.

Sub Tasks

1. Search for a user from the directory
2. Send friend request using "Add as friend" button.
3. When the friend approves or disapproves a request, user will be notified and friend list will be updated accordingly.

Preconditions

1. User's friend also uses the app

Frequency of use: Several times a day

3: Invite friends to a Event/Meeting

Goal: Invite friends to join an event or a meeting.

Sub Tasks

1. Enter event/meeting details (time, place, and additional notes).
2. Search for friends to invite to the meeting.
3. Send invite
4. View friends’ RSVP

Preconditions

1. User must have the invitees added as friends.

Time constraints: Invites must be sent in real time.

Frequency of use: Several times a week.

4: RSVP to an Event/Meeting invitation

Goal: Send response to an invite.

Sub Tasks

1. Receive event invitation notification.
2. Select a response from “accept/decline”
3. Add additional notes with response.
4. Send response.

Preconditions

1. None.

Frequency of use: Several times a weekAlternative Use Case 2:  Identify people in a group who are most disconnected (useful for managers to size up weak points in team interactions).