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 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.
Lessons learned from the Graduate Student
- To locate a stranger within the same institution, students have to resort to a multitude of resources in order to do so. (Google or directory for person’s office; whereis.mit to locate the physical location of the office. There is a need for a unified directory.
- There is no clear way to find out a person’s availability based on his/her location currently.
- There is no clear way to find people with similar interests currently.
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:
- 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.
- Identify and select the person you are looking for.
- View profile for the selected person.
- 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
Goal: To present a unified profile view that contains up-to-date information about each user.
Use Case:
- User wants to look for a person and does not have a centralized directory to do so.
- User wants to find information about the user which is up-to-date and filled-in
Preconditions:
- User has approved for a public directory listing.
- User has filled in his/her user profile either manually or automatically by granting the app permission to populate the information
Time constraints: None
Frequency of use: several times a day, depending on the users preference.
Spontaneous meeting
Goal: Get introduced to colleagues who share your similar personal and work interests.
Use Case:
- You or your colleague enter a public area (e.g. office kitchen, hallway, etc.).
- You and your colleague are identified as sharing a certain level of similar interests.
- You and your colleague are notified of your shared interests.
- 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:
- You wish to know about the availability of the person based on whether he/she is present in his office
- You wish to know about locality of colleagues in order to organize impromptu meetings
- 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
Goal: Show strength of connections between employees based on their interactions.
Use Case:
- Select a group, such as your project team, friends, or department.
- View the strength of connections between members in the selected group.
- View the people (outside the group) who have strong connections with members inside the selected group.
- 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.
Preconditions:
- Users approve sharing of their activity with their colleagues.
Frequency of use: Daily or several times weekly.