GR1

User Analysis

Our Two User Classes:

• The traveler - An active person who spends much time exploring new places. Travelers often like to take photos of these places as a way to record their experiences. They tend to be tech-savvy and own smartphones.
• The interested non-traveler - Possibly a friend or a concerned parent of a traveler, who would check up on the traveler's activities if given the option. This user class might not be familiar with technology, but can at least use e-mail.

Personas

Interviewee 1, 28, lives in San Francisco. She has traveled to many Asian counties, backpacked through Europe, and is planning on a trip to Australia this spring. She enjoys exploring new places and meeting new people. Most of the time, she uses the camera on her iPhone. Claiming to have bad memory, she tries to write down her experiences whenever she can. Unfortunately, she often forgets to do so or procrastinates. She also mentions that she meets great people on her trips, but always misplaces their contact information. Interviewee 1 likes to share photos that she finds exceptionally interesting, usually by using Facebook.

Conclusion
From this interview, we learned that a solution should:

• motivate or remind travelers to record their experiences (Reason: travelers tend to forget or procrastinate)
• store contact information of new people that the travelers meet (Reason: contact information can be easily misplaced)
• give travelers the option to share specific photos with a specific group of people (Reason: travelers want to choose which photos to share and with whom to share them)

Interviewee 2 is a mother who lives in Brooklyn. She is not very familiar with technology, but she knows how to read/write e-mails and use simple mobile applications. She tries to keep in touch with her two daughters once every few days. Although her daughters don't mind talking to their mother at all, they are often too busy to talk on the phone. Interviewee 2 could e-mail them instead, but she is a very slow typist. She especially worries when her daughters travel somewhere, because they tend to be even more unresponsive during their travels. She just wants a simple way to check that they are safe.

Conclusion
From this interview, we learned that a solution should:

• be a clean, simple interface with clearly-labeled buttons and good visual feedback (Reason: Some users (of the "interested non-traveler" class) are unfamiliar with technology)
• allow travelers to upload photos + descriptions instantly, from wherever they are (Reason: Users who want to check up on travelers would like to see relatively fresh information)
• give notifications on users' updates through e-mail, if we decide on a notification system at all (Reason: We should notify users through a tool that they are already familiar with (i.e. e-mail))

Interviewee 3, 25, lives in Boston. She frequently travels to urban destinations for social visits, conferences, and vacations. She is very active in maintaining an online presence and openly shares the highlights of her experiences. She uses her mobile phone as her primary camera, a means to organize her contacts, and her primary interface for communicating online. She usually shares her trips as a series of blog posts and photo albums after the trip, manually sorting the notes and photographs she records while away.

Conclusion
From this interview, we learned that a solution should:

• Avoid notifications, even intelligently triggered notifications (Reason: any prompts would irritate naturally active users)
• Store the journal entry time and GPS location for all entries including contacts and photographs (Reason: location and time are relevant in journal entries)
• Be fully usable for journaling whether or not the device is online (Reason: a user must be able to make a journal entry at any time, and cellular service may be unavailable during travel)
• Emphasize journaling over sharing, (Reason: this is the main attraction that distinguishes this project from previously successful work)

Task Analysis