GR1 - Task analysis
User analysis
Users are expected to know English, but are not expected to know Chinese or Japanese. Users can range from novices, who are not expected to have received training on using the tool, or about kanji, beforehand. However, some users will be using this tool in their everyday jobs, and will therefore need to be able to input characters quickly using it.
...
Novice Users
...
Don't know the appearance or meanings of any radicals. Don't care particularly about the speed of inputting the character.
...
Experienced Users
...
Likely know the appearance and meanings of a handful of radicals. Likely care about inputting characters quickly, but not enough to warrant learning a new language or undergoing extensive training.
...
Personas / Scenarios
...
The novice user, who needs to type in only a handful of characters for translation: Sue.
Sue just received a can of food from a friend, that was made in China. Unfortunately, it has no label in English, therefore she doesn't know what it is, or whether she can eat it. She needs to be able to input the characters so that she can look them up on a translation website.
The frequent user, who needs to input a limited set of characters frequently: Mark.
Mark works in data entry at a company. He receives item orders handwritten on a sheet of paper, with the name of the client, and the number of orders. However, clients do not romanize their names, so Mark needs to be able to type the appropriate kanji for their names. Because Mark works in data entry, he also needs to be able to type these names in with reasonable speed.
A person who is training users to type kanji using this children: Sally
Due to the proliferation of kanji in America, the US DoE has made training children to type them part of the K-12 curriculum. Sally is a teacher who is teaching children to be able to type kanji quickly using this tool.
Task analysis
The overall task is to look at a character, and input it into the computer.
Because this tool assumes that users don't know the readings of kanji, the identification and input process will be based on radicals (components of which kanji are composed).
One task will be to identify radicals of which the kanji is composed of. For an experienced user, who might have already memorized the appearance of some of the radicals, this will simply involve looking at the character. For a novice user, however, this task will involve looking at the character, while simultaneously referring to some reference of the appearance of the available radicals.
The next task will be to identify the radicals to the computer. This task can be accomplished either using a point and click interface (which will likely be done by novice users), though expert users might want to use the keyboard for efficiency - for example by typing in some textual representation of each radical (say, the user might type in the english meanings of the radical - for example, to input 語, the user would want to indicate to the system that he sees that it is composed of 言, 五, and 口, so the user might want to indicate these by typing the meanings of the radicals - for example, "say", "five", and "mouth",
User Types:
Students:
Characteristics:
- High school/college level and age. Technologically apt.
- slightly to moderately literate in foreign language of study
- motivation is to expand personal knowledge of a foreign language
Role: Using the website as a supplement or class assignment for a language class.
Teachers:
Characteristics:
- Ages and technological aptitude both vary. Purpose is to effectively educate students in the foreign language
- expert in foreign language of study
- motivation is to teach students
Role: Select proper example/supplementary material for students, also contributes material.
Sentence Contributors (can be advanced students or teachers, must have contributor privilege):
Characteristics: Of all ages and regions. Familiar with the language information is being contributed in. Competent in using technology.
Role: Philanthropic contribution of language supplementary resources.
Task analysis
Finding reading material
Prerequisites
User is reading out of a textbook for which sentences have been added to the database.
- textbook will only have to be specified once. Chapter will be periodically updated
- may want to persist this information (using a login system)
User is studying a course for which the teacher has aggregated sentences.
Subtasks
Inform the system of what textbook you're reading, and what chapter you're reading in.
Inform the system of any particular idioms, grammar patterns, or vocabulary you'd like to practice.
Time constraints
A first-time user will want to be able to access reading material as soon as possible, hence this should take as little time as possible
Frequency
Frequently used by students.
Observations
Students in foreign language classes often encounter similar difficulties when understanding certain materials as previous students in the course. More experienced students can contribute greatly towards helping new students understand language concepts that the experienced students once had trouble with. Therefore, contributor privileges for experienced students will also be beneficial.
Reading
Prerequisites
User's level of reading needs to be determined beforehand.
Subtasks
Understand the meaning
Define words you didn't understand
Focus your review on vocabulary you didn't understand.
Observations
When students complete reading assignments, he often consults with peers (who are relative experts in the language) when he encounters a difficult sentence. Students will usually ask the expert to give specific examples of correct vocabulary usage to clarify the meaning of the sentence. Students will also often construct hypothetical sentences and ask experts to verify them. This observation suggests that students attempt to learn vocabulary by seeing its usage in various contexts.
Adding examples of user-level reading and translations
Requirements
User should be trusted to not spam the website.
Subtasks
Provide the sentence in the foreign language
Provide the translation in the native language
Indicate what reading abilities are required to understand this sentence
Observations
Contributors tend to be students in higher levels of the language and are contributing to help students at a lower level. Most contributions are constructive; however, students required by professors to contribute materials to such a site might be unenthusiastic about making a stellar example.
Creating a collection of supplementary reading for a class
Requirements
Example sentences using the vocabulary and sentence patterns that is being covered in the class must have been added into the database of sentences beforehand.
Observations
Currently, several course websites for MIT language courses add a "supplementary readings" section where example sentences in the foreign language are presented in plain text. The examples emphasize on the sentence patterns, idioms, and vocabulary that have been learned in recent lessons.
Often, the sentences presented may utilize supplementary material in addition to what has been presented in the textbook. For example, the textbook may be romanized, but the example sentences may have been written in their original character set. Thus, these sentences are not appropriate for presentation to the textbook readers in general, who would be unable to read them, but would still be useful to have in a centralized location for the class. Moreover, some students seem to have an aversion towards asking questions in class, so this type of supplementary material will contribute to the understanding of the non-talkative student.
Therefore, in addition to allowing users to select sentences to be presented to them based on their progress in a textbook, another desirable ability would be to have teachers be able to augment the sentences presented to their users with custom sentences (in addition to those that are associated with the textbook).
Subtasks
Locate sample sentences that utilize the idioms and vocabulary taught in the curriculum.
Inform students about newly available supplementary sentences once they are covered in class.
Domain analysis
...