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.
A large concern when planning a trip is how to go through the overwhelming amount of information online. Our interviewee explained that she is always irritated at how slow the process is, and that it is a very 'hectic' experience to filter through so much information to cut down unnecessary and irrelevant data. Also gathered was the insecurity of the process: that if someone were to go to an unfamiliar location in any part of the world, it would be difficult to trust a writer of a review as the reader has no idea what that person is like, what they enjoy, their motives for writing the review, etc.
Through discussion it was understood that this project would alleviate a lot of the problems faced while trying to plan a trip. Also, a hidden benefit was noticed about the website: A user would be able to keep track of his/her friends' adventures and activities. Their profiles would be a source of education and he/she would be able to learn about new things from other cultures vicariously through a friend.
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: (A frequent traveler)
After talking to a person who is traveling more than once per year, we realized that it is also a good way to keep track of your own travels. Usually, people just take pictures and leave them
in an album and, then, forget the little details of their trip. Also, if you travel a lot, it is hard to remember all your experiences all the time. However, with this website you can have all your trips summarized
in a very elegant way and access them and reflect on your trips anytime you want.
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.