User Analysis

The users would be MIT community members, the undergraduate students, graduate students, Post Docs and Professor. 

Characteristics

1. Age varies from 18 to 28, for both male and female users
2. English-speaking 
3. Computer literate

Needs

1. Have busy schedules. 
2. Are interested in socializing and sharing ideas and interests. 

Case Studies

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

1. -          Tim the 1st Year Grad Student (Age 26)
2. -          Jeff the 3rd Year Undergrad Student (Age 20)
3. -          Jermie the 2nd Year Grad Student (Age 25)

1: Tim the 1st Year 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 

• To locate a stranger within the same institution, students have to resort to a multitude of resources in order to do so. (Google or MIT directory to find a 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 current location .
• There is no clear way to find people with similar interests.

2: Jeff the 3rd Year Undergraduate Student 

Jeff is a 3rd year undergrad student in the EECS department.  He attends classes, lectures, recitations and often needs to meet with Professors, friends, and other groups for various meetings.  His primary method for getting contact information is through Facebook or faculty members personal pages.  His primary method of contacting others is through online messaging (e-mail, Facebook, Google+, etc.) or text messaging.  He doesn't like the current MIT directory page as it doesn't allow for filtering.  Unfortunately, these electronic methods of communication are not always sufficiently fast and it may be difficult to find contact information through personal pages and directories.  

Lessons learned 

• There are many indirect methods of contacting people, which can be time consuming.  This is problematic in urgent situations.
• Current directories give no information on personal interests, this option with a filter would promote interest/hobby based communications.

3: Jermie the 2nd Year Graduate Student

Jermie is a 2nd year Graduate student in Chemistry Department. He is done with his Qualification Exam, but he still takes some classes and attends lectures and recitations. He is also TA for a Grad Course. He has a huge research group with multiple sub groups in it. In his research group they have a weekly meeting for the entire group and also many small ones where sub groups meet the adviser to give status reports. Because his adviser is a busy person, she has shared her number with all the group members and they give her a call in case urgent discussion is required while she is not around.

Apart from his work, he is interested in working out in gym and has a very social life. Also he happens to be a religious person and goes to church every weekend. He uses Gtalk and phone calls to arrange spontaneous hangouts. He bumps into people sharing his interests at church or other social gatherings that he likes to attend for this very reason. And for discovering new people in his organization MIT he uses MIT People Directory very often, and is very comfortable with it despite the difficult-to-use menus. 

Lessons learned 

• People who have been part of MIT for a long enough use "work-arounds" to arrange meetings or to discover new people. They have grown to accept these "work-arounds."
• By offering a convenient solution packaged in one easy-to-use UI, people will find new features they wish they had or thought they were missing.

Task Analysis

The main tasks performed through our User Interface are:

1. -          Find a friend
2. -          Invite friends to a future meeting
3. -          Visualize nearby friends in real-time
4. -          Organize meetings you have planned

1: Find a friend

Goal

Find the location and status of a friend.

Sub Tasks

1. Enter a name in the "Search" text field for searching by name. OR
2. Select a category from the "Search by" drop down menu (optionally: enter the interest/department/group name you are interested in).
3. Identify the person you are looking for by browsing through the list of search results displayed, and select it by clicking or tapping on the entry
4. View profile for the selected person.
5. View the location for the selected person (if the person has approved you as their friend).

Preconditions

1. Discover.Me searches in an existing directory containing their friend's information (e.g. MIT directory).
2. User's friend must "turn on" the app for you to find his location.

Time constraints

Search must be quick. Information gathered must be concise.

Frequency of use

Several times a day. 

2: Invite friends to a future meeting

Goal

Invite friends to join you in a future meeting. 

Sub Tasks

1. Enter event details (time, place, and additional instructions).
2. Search for friends to invite to the meeting.
3. View friends' status and available times.
4. Invite friends to the meeting. 
5. View friends who have accepted the meeting.

Alternative Sub Task

(Begins after Step 5 above.)

1. Friend declines meeting due to time conflict.
2. Friend proposes new meeting time.
3. Organizer receives request for new meeting time.
4. Organizer approves new meeting time.
5. All invitees receive an updated request for new meeting time.
   

Preconditions

1. Meeting organizer sees any times during which his friends are "busy."
2. User's friend must turn on the app so that it reports their current status.

Time constraints

Matching must occur in short duration. Notification should present concise information on your shared interests or connections.

Frequency of use

Depending on the Mobility of user, once or several times a day.

3: Visualize nearby friends in real-time

Goal

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

Sub Tasks

1. Search for a user
2. Send friend request using "Add as friend" button. 
3. When the friend approves or disapproves a request, user will be notified and friend list will be updated accordingly. 
4. User clicks their friend's name on the Friend list.
5. Friend's location appears as an icon on a map.
6. User clicks their friend's icon to view their friend's current status.

Preconditions

1. User's friend approve the friend request.
2. User's friend enables sharing of their location.

Frequency of use

Daily

4: Modify previously planned meetings

Goal

 Change time, location, or invitation list for a previously planned meeting.

Sub Tasks

1. View a list events of all events you are participating in.
2. Select an event that you have previously organized.
3. View the event time, location, and invite list.
4. Update the event time, location, and/or invite list.
5. Send updated event to invitees.
6. View friends who have accepted your updated event invite.

Preconditions

1. You are the meeting organizer for the event.
2. Maximize office layout view based on teams or any other profile information.

Frequency of use

Daily or several times weekly.