User Analysis

The users would be MIT community members, the undergraduate students, graduate students, Post Docs and Professor. 

Characteristics

1. Age varies from 18 to 65, for both male and female users
2. English-speaking 
3. computer literate

Needs

1. Have busy schedules. 
2. Are interested in socializing and sharing ideas and interests. 

Case Studies

There are several types of users who will use our product. To detail each persona, we interviewed people from each user group:

1. -          Tim the Grad Student (Age ?)
2. -          Donald the Professor (Age Around 45-50)
3. -          Jeff the 3rd Year Undergrad Student (Age 20?)
4. -          Jermie the 2nd Year Grad Student (Age 25)

1: Tim the 1st Year Graduate Student

Tim is a first year graduate student in the EECS department. He attends classes and lectures, and often has to meet with various Professors, TAs, Lab mates and friends for a variety of activities. He considers himself tech-savvy, but finds certain problems related to locating people and places within the campus annoying. For example, he needed to meet his Graduate Counselor to get an Add/Drop/Status Change form signed; and even though he had emailed, the counselor’s availability was a vague range (i.e. anytime before 5pm). He made several trips down on the same day and only managed to get what he needed after several tries.

Lessons learned 

• To locate a stranger within the same institution, students have to resort to a multitude of resources in order to do so. (Google or directory for person’s office; whereis.mit to locate the physical location of the office. There is a need for a unified directory.
• There is no clear way to find out a person’s availability based on his/her location currently.
• There is no clear way to find people with similar interests currently.

2: Vincent the Professor

Vincent wants his research group to interact with each other by sharing ideas and receiving feedback. He wants to see how frequently his group members are meeting with each other, and with other research groups. Vincent sometimes comes across interesting research presentations and articles, so he wants to be able to easily forward this information to his students. He also wants his students' daily schedules to be easily accessible to his administrator, so that she can schedule meetings for his research group. Vincent often meets with people from visiting universities and companies, so he also wants the tool to help him find and locate people outside of MIT. Of course, Vincent wants the tool to be efficient, so that his group can still concentrate on finishing research work. He also expressed usefulness in being able to view how the sub-teams are spread out across the office space, perhaps to facilitate people in the same group being located close to one another.

Lessons learned 

• Overseeing students' research activities can be time-consuming. The app can help facilitate communication with his research group and between members in the research group.
• The app will be even more useful if it includes people from outside MIT.

3: Jeff the 3rd Year Undergrad Student 

Jeff is a 3rd year undergrad student in the EECS department.  He attends classes, lectures, recitations and often needs to meet with Professors, friends, and other groups for various meetings.  His primary method for getting contact information is through Facebook or faculty members personal pages.  His primary method of contacting others is through online messaging (e-mail, Facebook, google+, etc.) or text messaging.  He doesn't like the current MIT directory page as it doesn't allow for filtering.  Unfortunately, these electronic methods of communication are not always sufficiently fast and it may be difficult to find contact information through personal pages and directories.  

Lessons learned 

• There are many indirect methods of contacting people, which can be time consuming.  This is problematic in urgent situations.
• Current directories give no information on personal interests, this option with a filter would promote interest/hobby based communications.

4: Jermie the 2nd year Grad Student

Jermie is a 2nd year Graduate student in Chemistry Department. He is done with his Qualification Exam, but he still takes some classes and attends lectures and recitations. He is also TA for a Grad Course. He has a huge research group with multiple sub groups in it. In his research group they have a weekly meeting for the entire group and also many small ones where sub groups meets the adviser to give status reports. Because his adviser is a busy person therefore she has shared her number with all the group members and they give her a call in case urgent discussion is required while she is not around.

Apart from his work he is interested in working out in gym and has a very social life. Also he happens to be a religious person and goes to church every weekend. He uses Gtalk and phone calls to arrange spontaneous hangouts. He bumps into people sharing his interests at church or other social gatherings that he likes to attend for this very reason. And for discovering new people in his organization MIT he uses MIT People Directory very often, and is very comfortable with it despite the difficult-to-use menus. 

Lessons learned 

• People who are part of this organization for long enough have come up with different work around for situations such as; arranging a meeting or discovering new people, and have grown to accept them. 
• If we offer them a more convenient solution packaged in one easy-to-use UI only then they will realize what they wish they had or thought they were missing.

Task Analysis

The main tasks performed through our User Interface are:

1. -          Search for a colleague
2. -          Edit Online Profile or add further information into it 
3. -          Have spontaneous meeting
4. -          View Real-time visual representation of location of friends
5. -          View connections between colleagues

1: Search for a colleague

Goal

Find the location of a colleague.

Sub Tasks

1. Enter a name in the "Search" text field for searching by name. OR
2. Select a category from the "Search by" drop down menu, and enter the interest/department/group name you are interested in.
3. Identify the person you are looking for by browsing through the list of search results displayed, and select it by clicking or tapping on the entry
4. View profile for the selected person.
5. View the location for the selected person.

Preconditions

1. User's colleague has a profile in the system.
2. User's colleague must "turn on" the app for you to find his location.

Time constraints

Search must be quick. Information gathered must be concise.

Frequency of use

several times a day. 

2: Edit Online Profile or add further information into it

Goal

To present a unified profile view that contains up-to-date information about the user.

Sub Tasks

1. View his/her profile.
2. Go to Edit mode by clicking/tapping the Edit button. 
3. Change text field entries.
4. Confirm the changes by clicking/tapping Save button. 

Preconditions

1. User has approved for a public directory listing.

Time constraints

None

Frequency of use

Depending on users preference, as frequent as several times a day or as rare as once a year. 

3: Have spontaneous meeting

Goal

To get introduced to colleagues who share similar personal or work interests with the user. 

Sub Tasks

1. Update your profile and add interests in it. 
2. Change availability to "Open to Spontaneous Meeting" 
3. When two (or more) users with such setting, enter a common area the application will notify them. 

Preconditions

1. You and your colleague are identified as being "Open to Spontaneous Meeting".
2. You and your colleague are not busy during that particular time frame.

Time constraints

Matching must occur in short duration. Notification should present concise information on your shared interests or connections.

Frequency of use

Depending on the Mobility of user, once or several times a day.

4: Real-time visual representation of location of nearby friends

Goal

Enable the ability to locate pre-approved friend(s) on a map view

Sub Tasks

1. Search for a user
2. Send friend request using "Add as friend" button. 
3. When the friend approves or disapproves a request, user will be notified and friend list will be updated accordingly. 
4. Go to "Friends" menu and browse through the list for a particular friend and click/tap at friend's name to view his/her location.

Preconditions

1. User's friend would have to approve the friend request.
2. User's friend would have to turn on location-sharing

Frequency of use

Daily

5: View connections between colleagues

Goal

Show strength of connections between employees based on their interactions and/or teams.

Sub Tasks

1. Go to Groups Menu and Select a group of people or a department.
2. View the strength of connections between members in the selected group.
3. View the people (outside the group) who have strong connections with members inside the selected group.
4. Select a person and view their profile and major connections.
5. View associations between people based on their teams.

Alternative Use Cases

1. Search for a person and be introduced to that person via a mutual connection.
2. Maximize office layout view based on teams or any other profile information.

Preconditions

1. Users approve sharing of their activity with their colleagues.
2. Users team information filled in.

Frequency of use

Daily or several times weekly.