User and Task analysis for SETENTS

User Analysis

Our intended user base is people who wish to use their computers to take notes on presentations, or on readings.  This mainly consists of college students taking notes in lecture.

• Age, Gender Culture: The age of our main target users, college students, ranges from 18 to 28.  Users might be of any gender, and are from a culture that is proficient in English. 

• Education: Users are mostly college educated.

• Physical limitations: Users do not have any physical limitations which would prevent them from taking notes on paper unassisted.

• Computer experience: Users are computer literate, and prefer computer-based solutions to their problems. 

• Motivation: Users want to use notes to be able to remember what was taught during a lecture or other presentation, or as a summary of readings.  Users might only take notes when such a summary is not otherwise readily available: one student does not take notes when she knows that PowerPoint slides will be made available online.  Users want to be able to easily search their notes, and share them with others.  One student who currently takes notes on paper frequently shares notes with students who did not attend lecture, but must scan the notes to make a copy; she would like to be able to share notes more easily.  Users would like the ability to revisit parts of the presentation that they missed, although for the most part they do not want recordings of the entire presentation, since reviewing them would take too much time.  Users would like to be able to quickly identify important sections of their notes when they are reviewing them: equations which are necessary to complete a pset, for instance. 

• Domain experience: All of our users have taken notes in the past, and would take notes if our software did not exist. 

• Application experience: All users have experience taking notes on paper, and most have taken notes on a computer as well.  Users mentioned using applications such as Word, basic text editors, and online solutions such as google docs to take their notes.  Use of specialized note-taking software such as OneNote was less common, perhaps due to its cost and limited platform availability. 

• Work environment and other social context: Most of our users will be students in a lecture hall or classroom.  Users might also be taking notes in other contexts, for instance during a meeting, or a presentation at a conference.  In most cases, many people will be using laptops.  However one student (in course 10) said that most of the students in her lectures take notes by hand, and although laptop use is not prohibited, she might feel uncomfortable being the only one in a room using a computer to take her notes. 

• Relationships and communication patterns with other people: During the actual note-taking process, people tend to be focused on the presentation or reading that is the subject of their notes, so they are not interacting with those around them.  People might wish to share notes once they're done, for instance with friends who couldn't (or didn't) go to class on a particular day. 

Task Analysis

why is the task being done

what does the user need to know of have before doing the task

where is the task performed

what is the environment like

how often is the task performed

what are tis time or resource constraints

how is the task learned

what can go wrong

who else is involved in the task

Typing text notes

Problem: Taking notes on paper leads to several problems -- most notably the fact that multiple notebooks are needed to organize notes from multiple subjects. For many computer users, typing is actually faster than writing by hand, so typing notes may prevent a user from falling behind the lecturer, especially if the user wants to take notes on things that are said and not written. Users of text editing software have also complained about formatting text for notes, especially outline formats with bullet points, and integrating source code into text notes (in programming classes) while formatting the code nicely.

Inserting/Drawing diagrams

Problem: One of the most challenging and frustrating parts of taking notes on a computer is trying to integrate diagrams or drawings from class into notes in a text editor. Sometimes a particular chart or graph is essential to the understanding of the notes, so the difficulty causes many note takers to stick with paper and pen instead of dealing with this issue.

Why do the task: Users might need to revisit their notes for two reasons: either to re-read their notes in order to recall or review the information contained in them, or to modify their notes in order to correct errors or add new information.  

What does the user need to know or have: In order to do either of these tasks, the user must have the notes they wish to review or revise readily available.  If the user is adding new information to the notes, they must have all of the information they are adding at hand.  They must also be able to physically insert the information: simple with digital documents, but this might require inserting pages or crossing out text for paper notes.  As for reviewing, if a user is looking for certain information in the notes instead of re-reading everything, the user must know how to identify the thing they are looking for.

Reviewing/editing past notes