Jobious GR1

User Analysis

As this is a community-driven site and we want complete freedom to share any opinions, we will be limiting the user community to MIT students(undergraduate and graduate) that hold @mit.edu email addresses and MIT alumni that hold @alum.mit.edu email addresses.

• Current MIT students interested in internships and post-degree employment opportunities
• MIT alumni that want to help current students choose their careers

Personas

Irene the internship seeker

Irene is the freshman in your dorm that wanted to always talk about her next, big project. She really ants to do "something awesome and cool" this summer, preferably with "fluid dynamics or explosions."

Will the Wonderer

Will doesn't really have any career aspirations or direction to his life. He is interested in many things but cannot find something consistently interesting enough to hold his attention for more than a few months. He is trying to discover his path in both life and primarily uses Jobious to narrow his career goals by browsing reviews to understand what he likes or doesn't like about each job

John the Job-secure

John is about to graduate from MIT after several years of consistent exertion building a resume of impressive projects and internships. He already has a job lined up for post-graduation and feels that he should share his experience so his less motivated brethren will have an easier path to follow.

Alan the Alumnist

After Alan graduated he went on to a quick succession of jobs none of which he found very satisfying and wants to share his experiences about each one with current students. He has since settled into a lucrative position where he is happy and has free time to give advice to inquisitive youngsters. He doesn't mind being contacted through email and will calmly and graciously take the time to respond to banal requests such as "Do you work long hours?" or "I have never lived in NYC. Where should I try and find apartments if I want to be close to the financial district?"

Representative Users

Our user interviews illustrated that there are is a general lack of understanding of what resources are available to current students and how to utilize them in an intelligent way. One of our users have never tried to use the CareerBridge because they found them superfluous and confusing. Conversely, an alumnus had signed up to use InfiniteConnection but had never actively used it as no current undergraduate had contacted him through email. Neither of the undergraduates were aware that InfiniteConnection existed.

When we discussed the option of a single portal that could effectively handle the tasks of searching for interviews, reading comments on position postings and connecting with individuals currently employed in those positions versus the hodgepodge of websites currently in use they were almost unanimously in favor of the former. User AA found himself repeatedly bouncing between MIT-sanctioned and google search results in an attempt to cobble together enough information to make an informed choice. He commented that finding this information in one portal would make finding an internship significantly faster than his current practices allowed.

Below is more explicit data about the interviews that we performed:

User KE

User Description

KE is a current junior in computer science interested in epidemiology and network analysis. KE does not currently use CareerBridge to manage her interviews. In fact she has yet to begin searching for formal interviews or career advice as she enjoys academic research and prefers to email a professor directly to initiate contact. She is a new user to employment aid tools.

Session Notes

Upon asking her to attempt to use CareerBridge(for the first time) to find a position that she might be interested in Katie was able to navigate to the site and create an account.

Upon logging in she wasn't sure that she had been successful as the title bar still showed options to log in(pictured above). The main page had changed and that led her to believe that it was successful, but she thought that it was silly that after she logged in as a student she could log in as an employer.

As she tried to search for things related to epidemiology and networks she was frustrated that she couldn't specify these interests in a keyword search. After spending about 30 seconds deciding whether she should carefully enter values for all of the fields she gave up and selected "Sciences" in the Industry field and clicked search.

Only 14 results appeared on the first tab. The text fields at the top of the columns caused some confusion as she tried entering various search terms and hitting enter to trigger search before realizing that the button next to the text field was tied to the field and you had to select the type of filter you wanted.

She then looked at the "Indeed Jobs" and "MonsterCollege Jobs". She thought the number of results returned from them was laughable and wondered why the results weren't combined into a unified view with the MIT-specific ones ranking first or called out in a specific fashion. In the few minutes observed she was able to locate several thousand jobs related to epidemiology, however since she had not previously specified her experience or her field they were returned in an unsorted list. She then went back, amended her experience information and was able to find a posting that was suitable.

User MM

User Description

Michael is an MIT alum of both Course 6 and 15 and regularly advises undergraduates on finding internships/jobs. Right now, however, he can only help people that he is immediate friends with. One of his main concerns when asked what he would like most about website assisting in finding internships/jobs was being able to contact other users. This way undergraduate users from all of MIT would be able to contact him for help. Michael also brought up the current solution to this, MIT's alumni directory InfiniteConnection, but said he has never been contacted through it. As a result he's come to the conclusion that not many undergraduates even know about InfiniteConnection, so a more widely known service would be ideal.

User AA

User Description

AA is a freshman looking for his first summer internship position. He has heard about a number of companies but he doesn't have much information on these companies. He also doesn't know what people in his field of study have done for summer internships in the past. AA is a course 9 major and hasn't found anyone one in his living group in the same major. He is still taking general institute requirement classes and is also having difficulty finding an upperclassman in her major.

Session Notes

AA goes to the company websites and he only finds self-generated company descriptions. He has done extensive research on Google but he is having trouble filtering through the copious amounts of reviews to find the ones that suit his needs.

He goes to goes to CareerBridge to find out more about his desired positions but find company generated job descriptions. AA doesn't trust these descriptions because he thinks companies would always say positive things about themselves in order to attract more candidates.

Ultimately, AA wants to know more about these companies and positions from people who have firsthand experience working in these companies.

Task Analysis

Details of the high-level tasks.

Create a User Account

• Goal: create an account for the user so that they can post to the site
• Precondition: user has navigated to site

1. Locate create new account interface
2. Provide MIT login credentials(precondition:user already has an mit.edu email account)
   1. Enter MIT.edu email address
   2. Enter password
3. Submit account creation form(precondition:user has filled out all required fields)
4. Confirm via email validation
   1. User loads email
   2. Waits for arrival of Jobious account creation confirmation email
   3. Open Jobious account creation confirmation email
   4. Reads Jobious account creation confirmation email
   5. Follow link within email to confirm account creation attempt was valid

Post a review

• Goal: post a review of a job or internship you have previously attended or held.
• Precondition: user has navigated to site and logged in

1. Locate the create new review interface.
2. Choose the type of review to file.
   1. Indicate if this is an interview process review or a review of time spent holding the position
3. Fill in Review
   1. Note the specific position(precondition: know the name of the company and the position)
      1. Identify the company being reviewed(precondition:know the name of the company)
         1. Search for the company on Jobious(exception: if it is not found add a new one)
      2. Identify the specific position being reviewed(precondition: know job title)
         1. Search for the position on Jobious(exception: if it is not found add a new one)
   2. Provide the dates that the review is covering(precondition: know roughly when the experience occurred)
   3. Write unstructured review(precondition:user has something to say about their experience)
   4. Fill out review-type appropriate general rating scale.
4. Review your review
5. Post the review to the site for public consumption

Search for a review or information

• Goal: Locate and display
• Precondition: user has navigated to site

1. Find search interface.
2. Enter search terms.(precondition: know what you want to search for)
3. Trigger search
4. Review results

Save a job or internship that you are interested in(precondition: user has located a job that they are interested in)

• Goal: Mark a job or internship for future reference and make it visible to other users 
• Precondition: found a job or position that you are interested in

1. Decide that this posting is a favorite and you would like to save.
2. Mark as favorite by starring or adding to a favorites list
   1. Visually locate the mark as favorite icon
   2. Move cursor to the icon
   3. Click the icon
3. Confirm that posting has been marked as a favorite

Contact another user

• Goal: send a message to another user requesting more information regarding a post
• precondition: user has navigated to site and logged in

1. Find user contact interface.
2. Construct message
   1. Identify recipient of message.(precondition: know who you would like to message)
   2. Construct message title.(precondition: know the topic you are going to converse on)
   3. Construct message body.
3. Send message
   1. Click on "Send message" button
   2. Await confirmation that message has been sent
   3. Read confirmation
4. Resume previous activity

Responding to message from a user(precondition: user has received a message)

• Goal: respond to a user that has already messaged you
• precondition: user has navigated to site and logged in

1. Discover that you have unread messages to read.
2. Find messaging interface.
3. Determine which messages are unread.
4. Select message to read.
5. Read message.
6. Determine that this message needs a response.
7. Go to construct response interface
   1. Click on "Reply Button"
8. Construct response
   1. Construct message title.(precondition: know the topic you are going to converse on)
   2. Construct message body.
9. Send response
   1. Click on "Send message" button
   2. Await confirmation that message has been sent
   3. Read confirmation

Domain Analysis