User Analysis:

We aim to provide a service for two types of user interactions. First, we want to allow users to search for and find information about HASS classes. Second, we want users to be able to contribute information about HASS classes that they have taken in a simple and easy fashion.

• Demographics
  • MIT Students, age 16-23.
  • Computer literate, English speaking
• Searchers
  • Primary Intent
    • Discover different HASS classes.
    • Find HASS classes that have certain desirable characteristics (ie, small amounts of writing required).
  • Expectations
    • Site should be easy to navigate.
    • Site should be secure and anonymous
    • Site should have reliable information
  • Characteristics
    • Does not want to spend a large amount of time sifting through MIT Subject Evaluation pages.
    • Short attention span.
    • Want to be served both TLDRs and longer descriptions if necessary.
    • Anecdotes
• Informers
  • Primary Intent
    • Share information with people that they might not know
    • Prevent students from falling into pitfall HASS classes
  • Expectations
    • Should be very easy to submit information
    • Site should be secure and anonymous
  • Characteristics
    • Angry people who had a bad experience
    • People who had an above and beyond experience
    • People who liked the professor, but may not have like the class

Task Analysis:

• Browse for easy classes (by type, CI-H, HASS A/S/H)
  • Integrated advanced search by variety of fields
    • Number of pages of required reading and writing
    • Hours of work each week
    • Time class meets
    • Number of class sessions each week
• Submit reviews of classes → gain user credibility
  • Link credibility rating to user’s certificate.
  • Enable hashtags for fast searching
• Give overall ratings (classes could be worth taking even if they aren’t easy)
  • One unified “central opinion” based on post ranking.
  • Submission form for 1-sentence opinions.

TA Feedback.

As we discussed in our meeting, this project in this submission is not a stretch at all. Make sure you focus on something that's not just for MIT students, and that isn't just a layer over a database.

Your user analysis starts with demographics, which is kind of a backwards way of thinking about users, as we discussed in the meeting. However, it's commendable that you broke up your analysis of users by role, rather than just by characteristics.

Besides thinking about your users more holistically, and as people who have problems you're trying to solve, please also flesh out your tasks. There's very little information there, and you'll be working off this document for the whole rest of the project, so it's important to have this in writing.

A few smaller changes: try to make your group wiki less informal, please also change your group name to something consistent with the project.

I'd appreciate it if you made these changes, since we'll be working off this document for the whole rest of the project.