GR1 - Analysis

User Analysis

Flashcards are generally used only by students or by someone learning something new. Here are a few personas representative of the different ways that flashcards may be used:

• Thomas the foreign language student
• Autumn the art history student
• Watson the pre-med student

Thomas the foreign language student

Thomas looks forward to travelling, and in particular enjoys being able to converse in foreign languages. He often studies new vocabulary by using flashcards. His flashcards tend to be simple - for example, one side may have a Spanish word, and the other side has its English translation. However, for some languages, such as Japanese, he needs the Japanese kanji, the corresponding romanji, and the English translation.

Thomas finds flashcards to be particularly useful, since they are portable. He is also to make flashcards quickly, since all he has to do is copy a word and its translation onto each card. Thomas usually uses a handout or a glossary to find the necessary information to make his flashcards.

Flashcards for learning foreign languages will need to allow accents, as well as foreign alphabets and characters.

Autumn the art history major

Autumn is required to learn about many different art pieces and cultures. She uses flashcards to study, but making them takes a lot of time. Her flashcards often have an image of the particular art piece, as well as information about that piece such as the artist, date, and cultural time period.

Autumn doesn’t like making her flashcards, since it is time-consuming for her to print images and glue them to flashcards. However, her task is slightly simpler in that she is often given all the information she needs in an electronic format. She has tried other methods, such as putting images and information on a PowerPoint, but she also finds that to be tedious. Autumn’s flashcards aren’t very portable, since she usually needs to study at least a few hundred at a time. Additionally, although Autumn prefers to make her own cards, some of her friends buy flashcards from students who have already taken the class.

Flashcards for art pieces will need to allow images to be included on the flashcard. Additionally, it would be useful to be able to create flashcards quickly.

Watson the pre-med student

Watson relies on flashcards to memorize the sheer volume of information he is expected to know. For example, he uses flashcards to learn chemical structures for organic chemistry. He also uses them to prepare for tests, such as the MCAT. Oftentimes, Watson’s flashcards don’t need to carry very much information on them.

Since Watson often makes flashcards and his flashcards don’t need very much information, he can make them very quickly. He usually has a list of information he needs to know for the next exam, and sometimes he needs to find additional information from a textbook or the internet. He has tried alternate methods, such as Quizlet, but they are slower and less portable. On the other hand, electronic methods are easier to organize and don’t get lost.

Students who rely on flashcards for memorizing a lot of material need them to be quick and convenient. These students may also manipulate physical flashcards to use different organizational and learning tricks, so an electronic flashcard should be able to mirror these physical manipulations.

Task Analysis

Creating flashcards

In order to use flashcards, a user must first create and group their flashcards.

Before they can do this, the user must already have the information that they plan to put on their flashcards. For example, Thomas needs a list of vocabulary in his native language and in the foreign language. When making physical flashcards, the user needs the flashcards and a writing implement. Autumn would also need to print out copies of the art pieces she is learning. For an electronic flashcard, the user would need their information and any images that they would like to put on the card. Our app would need to support images and characters from foreign languages.

The user needs to make a new flashcard for each piece of information they need to learn. They will probably need to make up to a few hundred flashcards in a day, about once every month. Creating each flashcard should take about the same amount of time as creating a physical flashcard, but preferably less. A user most likely knows how to make a physical flashcard, and we would like to have them transfer that knowledge into making virtual flashcards, potentially with some guidance. It may be more difficult to make a flashcard on an Android.

A user may make a flashcard incorrectly or need to modify it, so flashcards should be able to be editted at any point in time.

We would also like to take advantage of the fact that our flashcards would be electronic. Because flashcards tend to fall into certain use cases, such as foreign language vocabulary, we can create templates that help optimize flashcard creation. Furthermore, we would like to be able to import flashcards from other sources; potential sources include Microsoft word files, spreadsheets, website tables, or other flashcard sources (such as Quizlet). Because flashcard creation on an Android may be inconvenient, we are also considering a web application that would allow the user to make flashcards. Finally, users should be able to send their flashcards to other users. Many of these ideas would require internet access.

Organizing flashcards

Users need to be able to sort their flashcards into sets to study.

Initially, users only need to know which flashcards belong in a set they would like to study. However, they may want to reorganize their sets, or select specific cards to put into a set. A user probably does not need to create new sets of flashcards very often.

To learn how to organize flashcards, we intend to build off of preexisting knowledge of how to organize files / images.

Useful features for helping the user decide which flashcards to study could include statistics, such as how often the user knows the information on the flashcard. Additionally, the user will want to be able to search through their flashcards, so a tagging system may be useful. Finally, if the flashcard sets are presented as files in a directory, the user should be able to manipulate the “files” in an intuitive way.

Using flashcards

Users want to use their flashcards to actually study them.

The user needs to have created flashcards in advance, and organized them into a set of what they intend to study. The user is likely to study the cards often (until they know them), potentially several times a day.

Using virtual flashcards should be similar to using actual flashcards. As such, we would like the user to be able to use their knowledge of existing flashcards to figure out how to use ours. Additionally, we can include a sample flashcard.

The user should be able to “flip” the card over. They would likely want to organize cards while studying. Users would like a way to mark a card as correct or incorrect, and to be able to temporarily arrange cards into “piles,” similar to what they might do in real life.

TA Feedback.

As we discussed, this project is just barely a stretch. Consider broadening your user population or working very hard to take advantage of mobile interface constraints/patterns.

It's not entirely clear how much of your user classes came from talking to specific people or just trying to envision what different roles would be like. Try to anchor your user classes in observations and discussions. Right now the classes are also very similar, with minor variations. Try to poke at what makes those classes different from each other, with respect to interacting with flashcards, not just inputting information.

You also don't seem to really get a good feel for what the tasks your users use to solve your problems, and instead you describe actions that your app will let users take. Don't forget that the next step is to make three separate designs - you shouldn't already have picked one. Think of task analysis as the analysis of tasks that need to be done to solve the problems.

I'd appreciate it if you made these changes, since we'll be working off this document for the whole rest of the project.