GR1 - User and Task Analysis

User Analysis

From our user interviews, we learned that Analyst's Notebook (ANB) has two main classes of users that use the program in very different ways:

1. Senior Analysts:* Age: 30-40 years old

• Experience: ~15 years, very highly experienced in their field and in using ANB
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  The users emphasized that efficiency is the most important aspect of UI design for them.

Task Analysis

With the back-end and database support provided by IBM, we will focus on designing effective ways to visualize data in a way that is understandable to users. Standard data visualization tools are available from open-source libraries such as processing.js. We will select a few visualization methods (e.g. web, map, graph) to focus on, geared toward understanding the data sets for WiFi in Africa. Some high-level tasks include:

1. Creating visualizations: It should be easy for users to generate new visualizations, e.g. selecting best visualization for data set, selecting data sets for different axes, etc.
2. Manipulating visualizations: Analysts may want to interact with the visualization and manipulate the data to show what's most important, e.g. sliding timescale, zoom in/out, etc.
   1. Annotation: Users often need to annotate data, making notes both for themselves and to share with others. They will need the ability to insert text comments, highlight parts of the visualization, etc. We will be in communication with our representative users to pinpoint the features that will be most useful to them.
3. Combining visualizations: Whether overlaying data sets or seeing different data sets next to each other, analysts find it useful to see multiple visualizations at once. This is one advantage that Palantir currently has over Analyst's Notebook.