The tour guide would like more feedback from the tourists. They feel like things would go more smoothly if tourists asked more questions, rather than just having to go straight through their own script. More feedback would allow more talking points for the guide as they go through the tour, rather than their having to fill up the empty time. For large groups, guides would like to ensure that everyone's questions and needs are met, especially those in the back of the group. They would also like to be able to facilitate ways of providing answers to tourists' questions that they do not know the answer to (e.g. refer them to someone else, how they can find out the information, etc.)
Goals/Needs
We define tourists as those who visit colleges and attend a college tour.
1. Academic Tourist
This tourist is interested in learning more about the academic side of student life. He is visiting other top schools in the area and therefore he is interested in what the college he is visiting is like compared to other colleges. He's interested in learning more about students in his intended major and what their coursework is like. If he knew of other events on campus, such as student expos, activity fairs, etc., he would be interested in attending. He'd also be interested in going to see some of the labs that students within his intended major work in, and what kind of research they do.
Goals/Needs
2. Story Tourist
This tourist is interested in learning more about student life on campus. She is interested in visiting some of the dorms on campus to get a feel of dorm life and culture. She is interested in hearing more interesting stories about the college and its student culture. If she knew of other events on campus she would also be interested in attending. She is interested in questions ranging from general college stats (how many people go here, etc.) to questions that were more obscure (who did the artwork here, how long etc.).
Goals/Needs
3. Parent tourist
Their child is a prospective student for the college. She would be interested in hearing about the different activities on campus that her kid could potentially get involved in. She would have also been interested in attending events on campus if she knew about them. Interested generally in making sure that her kid's needs/questions about college life are met and what the colleges she is visiting are like compared to each other and compared to other colleges for her kid.
Goals/Needs
4. General Visitor
This tourist is not touring the college for college life and is not a prospective student. They are touring the college in a queue of tourist attractions in the city. Would have liked to see more of the campus, including the college architecture, and some of the libraries.
Goals/Needs
The tourist office currently matches a tour guide to a tour group as first come, first serve. They would be interested in providing better matches and a method or organizing which tour guide gets which tours. They would also be interested in efficient methods of keeping track of the feedback they receive from tour guides and tourists.
Goals/Needs
Our future task analysis and approach to the project from here on out will more than likely focus more on the story tourist group and the tourist guides. The goals/interests of both these user groups are the least aligned with our own personal interests. The academic tourist group's goals/needs may be to similar to our own interests. The general visitor's goals/needs either cannot be solved by a UI or else can be addressed if we focus our attention on the goals/needs of other user groups. The parent tourist group's interests either overlapped with the story tourists or academic tourists, or were entirely dependent on whether their child's needs were met (which is hard to achieve through a UI unless the child is in the story tourist group). We also felt as though the story tourist's needs are the least met during college visits/tours, and would be the most interesting to tackle through the UI. Regarding the tourist office and story tourists pair versus the tourist guide and story tourists pair, we felt as though the needs of the tourist guide were most compatible with the needs of the story tourist, and that the collective problem of tacking both their needs through a UI would be fun to take on.