Table of Contents
User Analysis
Person looking for a concert (casual user)
- “David is an MIT undergraduate. He would like to be able to find concerts in Boston from up and coming artists with a sound similar to his interests, but cannot find a place where the information is organized”
Primary Intent
- Find concerts in your local area, meeting some interest, price range, and location criteria.
- Discover new artists through concerts.
- Find friends who would want to attend a concert with you.
Preconditions
- have preferences for artists/genres, pricing, or location radius
Characteristics
- young (18-25)
- mostly hipsters
- not into top 40, judging by last.fm's top artists. This means that the user's more likely to go to smaller venues with less-advertised concerts.
- Boston metropolitan area
- web proficient, uses social networking, possibly uses music racking sites (last.fm)
Musician (concert discovery)
- “William is a Berklee graduate, who works at a sound production studio. He would like to find concerts that he can draw inspiration from, or see artists that he already respects.”
- He’s also very interested in the acoustic qualities of venues. Where you see an artist is as important as the artist you see.
Primary Intent
- Find inspirational concerts.
- Learn more about specific venues.
- Find concerts by artists they already know.
Characteristics
- not necessarily tech-savvy
- more focused than the casual concertgoer
- less interested in discovery
- very interested in quality of music and sound production for artists, and acoustics for venues
- very interested in friends’ recommendations
Musician (advertising)
- “Jacob is an unknown musician in Boston. He would like to release samples of his music to the public and advertise his local concerts to those interested.”
Primary intent
- Advertise concerts that you will be performing.
- Gain recognition.
Characteristics
- not necessarily tech-savvy
- Relatively unknown. (not necessarily targeting popular people.)
- inputting large amounts of data: impatient. Need a good way to input a full tour.
Venue owner
- “Sandra is the manager of Paradise (a popular Boston club), and would like to advertise all the bands that will be performing in the near future.”
Primary intent:
- Advertise concerts you will be hosting
Characteristics
- not necessarily tech/media savvy.
- inputting large amounts of data. Need a good way to input concerts over the next few months.
Task Analysis
Casual User/Concertgoer
Find concerts specific to my interests (location, pricing, artist popularity, etc.)
Goal
- Find concerts available that match the user's interests (including price, location, and other administrative criteria)
- each criteria is a little bit dependent on other ones (willing to pay more/go farther for some concerts)
Frequency of Use
- A few times a month, to see what is available
Subtasks
- Find candidates for interesting concerts
- Keep interesting concerts somewhere to refer to later
Preconditions
- Have preferences for artists/genres, pricing, or location radius
Notes from interview
- Users we spoke to mentioned the current difficulty in filtering by age restrictions. This is especially important in Boston, which is home to 30 universities, and thus many college students under 21.
- One user mentioned that Ticketmaster only allows for filtering by a single criteria (location or price, but not both). Last.fm allows filtering by genre criteria and general location, but doesn't provide price information.
- All interfaces only allow filtering. Users' needs are a little more vague sometimes: "For most concerts, I'm only willing to pay a certain amount, but sometimes, I'm ok with paying a little more for bands I'm really into."
Provide feedback for concerts that you’ve attended
Goal
- Keeping track of concerts you have attended, let friends and other users know what you thought about these concerts
Frequency of Use
- A few times a month, or as often as the user attends concerts.
Subtasks
- Find concert that you’ve attended
- Enter in feedback (thoughts/reviews/etc) about the concert
Indicate concerts that you are interested in attending to friends
Goal
- Let friends know what types of concerts you are interested in.
Frequency of Use
Subtasks
- See what groups of friends are interested in, so you can enjoy concerts as a group.
- Find what concerts a specific friend is interested in, or would be likely to be interested in, so you can invite individuals.
Notes from interview:
- A user mentioned that the most important aspect of going to concerts is going to them with friends, and that a “social aspect” would be key to ConcertBOS.
- One young man stated that he actually enjoyed concerts a great deal, but that each step that went towards going to a concert, ie, keeping track of when bands he liked were in the area, and then finding friends to go with him to these concerts, involved so much tedious searching and planning that he was lucky to make it to one or two concerts a year. He said that even something that would allow him to simply see concerts that other friends were planning on going to would be enough to convince him to go to more concerts, since the burden of finding the concert would be removed.
- One user stated that it would be very helpful to be able to see what concerts friends or perhaps even girls one liked would be interested in going to, in order to be able to invite them, or be invited.
Musician (concert discovery)
Find a concert to find inspiration in
Frequency
Subtasks
- Find other artists whose work I could draw from
- Decide if the venue is worth going to
Find concerts specific to my interests (location, pricing, artist popularity, etc.)
- Same subtasks as casual user, with preferences leaning also into specific criteria like quality of sound engineering of band, reputation as musicians, acoustics of venue, etc.
Find friends with similar musical tastes to attend concerts with
Subtasks
- Find friends with similar musical tastes
- Of these friends, decide which ones will be able to have a good conversation about music with you afterward and be fun to hang out with.
- Invite these friends to attend a concert with you, or at least indicate that you are interested in attending the concert to them.
Artist
Give fans information about your upcoming performances.
Frequency
Subtasks
- Input time/place of concerts that your band will be performing
- Input genre and music excerpts
- Create artist profile
Club owner
Read about your venue and get feedback
Frequency
- Weekly (as often as new concert bookings trickle in)
Subtasks
- Take note of the more well received concerts
- Keep track of when and where artists of interest perform
- Optional: input genre
TA Feedback.
As we discussed, this isn't really a stretch right now, but we talked a lot about how that will improve. Make sure you don't broaden the scope to get there - it's too broad as it stands - but instead think about the differences in interactions you can have in the current scope.
You had a nice division of roles for the user analysis.
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.