User Analysis

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

-          ... the Grad Student

-          Donald the Professor

-          ... the Undergrad Student

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

Vincent the Professor

Vincent wants his research group to interact with each other by sharing ideas and receiving feedback. He wants to see how frequently his group members are meeting with each other, and with other research groups. Vincent sometimes comes across interesting research presentations and articles, so he wants to be able to easily forward this information to his students. He also wants his students' daily schedules to be easily accessible to his administrator, so that she can schedule meetings for his research group. Vincent often meets with people from visiting universities and companies, so he also wants the tool to help him find and locate people outside of MIT. Of course, Vincent wants the tool to be efficient, so that his group can still concentrate on finishing research work.

Lessons learned from the Professor

• Overseeing students' research activities can be time-consuming. The app can help facilitate communication with his research group and between members in the research group.
• The app will be even more useful if it includes people from outside MIT.
  

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

Search for a colleague

Goal: Find the location of a colleague.

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.

1. Identify and select the person you are looking for.
2. View profile for the selected person.
3. View the location for the selected person.

Preconditions:

-          Your colleague has a profile in the system.

-          Your colleague must "turn on" the app for you to find his location.

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

Frequency of use: 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

Goal: Enable the ability to locate pre-approved friend(s) on a map view

Use Case:

1. You wish to know about the availability of the person based on whether he/she is present in his office
2. You wish to know about locality of colleagues in order to organize impromptu meetings 
3. For finer grained information, the system would display the user's location in text as well.

Preconditions:

• You and your colleagues would have pre-approved the sharing of location information.
• You and your colleagues would have turned on location-sharing

Frequency of use: Daily

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:  Search for a person and be introduced to that person via a mutual connection.