GR1 - Task analysis
User analysis
We separate our users into two main categories. The System Administrators and the regular target users.
Population Characteristics for target users
Age: 16+. Basically, everyone can use it, but we think it is reasonable to assume that the users will be of some age.
Gender: Both.
Culture: As diverse as possible, in order to share a lot of different experiences. Primarily educated and English speaking.
Computer Skills: Basic Internet Browsing Capacity
Motivation: Experiencing, sharing, learning, and tracking.
Marital Status: All applicable
User Interviews
Person 1: (A social mid-age female, light traveler)
This person represents a large class of users in our project. Our interviewee is a mid-age female in her early 40s. She is a light traveler but in a very travel oriented community.
She states that her largest concern when planning a trip is how to go through the overwhelming amount of information online. She states that she is always irritated at how slow the process is, and states that it is a very 'hectic' experience for her as she has to filter through so much information to cut down unnecessary and irrelevant data. Our interviewee also said that if she wanted to go to an unfamiliar location in any part of the world, she could never trust a writer of a review as she has no idea what that person is like, what they enjoy, their motives for writing the review, etc.
Our interviewee said that this project would possibly alleviate a lot of the problems she faces while trying to plan a trip. She also mentioned the hidden addition to the website: She would be able to keep track of her friends' adventures and activities. Their profiles would be a source of education for her as she will be able to learn about new things from other cultures vicariously through a friend. This is an added value for the use of the website.
Person 2: (A travel agent)
This person is from an interesting group of users, which is directly relevant to our project.
Travel agents - who are trying to organize travel packets, according to their customers needs - love this inside information and the user feedback.
With this website, even users who are not familiar with Internet or users that are not used to this kind of websites will probably still use it indirectly through their travel agents
and they may also get a motivation to start using it on their own.
Potential for making it subscription-based, since travel agents would certainly pay for it. (However, we believe that we would lose a lot of other users. It is an option we can consider though)
Person 3:
Task analysis
All of the tasks are learnt by trying and by watching others maybe.
We leave the possibility of instructions or a help button open, for later stages in the design.
1) Goal: Create a profile. No sub tasks.
Frequency: Done once.
2) Goal: Maintain profile
Preconditions: You have to create a profile, before you can do anything on the website.
Must know: Username and Password
Sub tasks: - Log in
- Update/Change your info
- View your profile
Constraints: No time constraints and you can have 24/7 access.
Frequency: Depends on the user, since there are no restrictions.
3) Goal: Create/Update trip
This could be considered as part of the “Maintain Profile” task, but it is a very important task, therefore we are stating it separately.
Preconditions: Again, you have to create a profile and in order to update a trip you have to have it already created.
Sub tasks: - Log in
- Type trip info
- Upload pictures.
- Also, you can just view the trip.
Constraints: Maybe memory constraints on the data that the website will be able to hold.
Frequency: Depends on the user, since there are no restrictions.
4) Goal: Add friends/Expand network.
Preconditions: Other users have created profiles already and you can add them to your network.
Sub tasks: - Type friend’s info (if you know it already) or
- Search manually in the database, which will be conveniently separated into groups (like nationality).
5) Goal: Search
Preconditions: Other users have created profiles already and they have added information about their trips.
Sub tasks: - You can search for trips by country, by user, by nationality (given that we have grouped the users already).
- You can also search for friends.