GR1 - Task analysis

User analysis

We separate our users into two main categories. The System Administrators and the regular target users.

Population Characteristics for target users

Age: 16+. Basically, everyone can use it, but we think it is reasonable to assume that the users will be of some age.
Gender: Both.
Culture: As diverse as possible, in order to share a lot of different experiences. Primarily educated and English speaking.
Computer Skills: Basic Internet Browsing Capacity
Motivation: Experiencing, sharing, learning, and tracking.
Marital Status: All applicable

User Interviews

Person 1: (A social mid-age female, light traveler)

This person represents a large class of users in our project. Our interviewee is a mid-age female in her early 40s. She is a light traveler but in a very travel oriented community.

A large concern when planning a trip is how to go through the overwhelming amount of information online. Our interviewee explained that she is always irritated at how slow the process is, and  that it is a very 'hectic' experience to filter through so much information to cut down unnecessary and irrelevant data. Also gathered was the insecurity of the process: that if someone were to go to an unfamiliar location in any part of the world, it would be difficult to trust a writer of a review as the reader has no idea what that person is like, what they enjoy, their motives for writing the review, etc.

Through discussion it was understood that this project would  alleviate a lot of the problems faced while trying to plan a trip. Also, a hidden benefit was noticed about the website: A user would be able to keep track of his/her friends' adventures and activities. Their profiles would be a source of education and he/she would be able to learn about new things from other cultures vicariously through a friend.

Person 2: (A travel agent)

This person is from an interesting group of users, which is directly relevant to our project.

Travel agents - who are trying to organize travel packets, according to their customers needs - love this inside information and the user feedback.

With this website, even users who are not familiar with Internet or users that are not used to this kind of websites will probably still use it indirectly through their travel agents

and they may also get a motivation to start using it on their own.

Potential for making it subscription-based, since travel agents would certainly pay for it. (However, we believe that we would lose a lot of other users. It is an option we can consider though)

Person 3: (A frequent traveler)

After talking to a person who is traveling more than once per year, we realized that it is also a good way to keep track of your own travels. Usually, people just take pictures and leave them

in an album and, then, forget the little details of their trip. Also, if you travel a lot, it is hard to remember all your experiences all the time. However, with this website you can have all your trips summarized

in a very elegant way and access them and reflect on your trips anytime you want.

Person 4  (College International Student)

As an international student, he travels once or twice a year to see his family and travels for leisure a few times per year.

Rarely uses guide books. Instead he currently uses google to browse around the internet for recommendations and visits Yahoo answers, Trip Advisor, etc. 

He mentioned that there is so much information in the web, that even though it is tedious to go through it, it is pretty exhaustive. As a young, college student, he says that for him the layout of the information / website would be crucial to convince him to use the website. He does see value in condensing much of the information that there is out in the internet, and he likes that with this website, only people that are interested in your trips would be the ones with access to the information. He would like to share his fun trips, favourite venues, etc. with his friends, especially if the website is fun, but he stressed he would like simplicity of navigation. 

Finally he added that in his opinion, the amount of information gathered is what is crucial. It doesn't help if you don't have friends that travel often so user's should be given the option to submit their review publicly and to view public data, though he agrees it would be nice if privacy was the default.

Task analysis

All of the tasks are learnt by trying and by watching others maybe.
We leave the possibility of instructions or a help button open, for later stages in the design.

1)  Goal: Create a profile. No sub tasks.
     Frequency: Done once.

2)  Goal: Maintain profile
     Preconditions:    You have to create a profile, before you can do anything on the website.
                                 Must know: Username and Password
     Sub tasks: - Log in

                       - Update/Change your info

                       - View your profile
     Constraints: No time constraints and you can have 24/7 access.
     Frequency: Depends on the user, since there are no restrictions.
           
3)  Goal: Create/Update trip
     This could be considered as part of the “Maintain Profile” task, but it is a very important task, therefore we are stating it separately.
     Preconditions: Again, you have to create a profile and in order to update a trip you have to have it already created.
     Sub tasks: - Log in

                       - Type trip info

                       - Upload pictures.

                       - Also, you can just view the trip.
     Constraints: Maybe memory constraints on the data that the website will be able to hold.
     Frequency: Depends on the user, since there are no restrictions.

4)  Goal: Add friends/Expand network.
     Preconditions: Other users have created profiles already and you can add them to your network.

     Sub tasks: - Type friend’s info (if you know it already)   or

                       - Search manually in the database, which will be conveniently separated into groups (like nationality).

5)  Goal:  Search   
     Preconditions: Other users have created profiles already and they have added information about their trips.

     Sub tasks: - You can search for trips by country, by user, by nationality (given that we have grouped the users already).

                       - You can also search for friends.

Domain analysis

Entities, Relationships and multiplicities of World Insider:

Entities:

• ACTIVITY: Activities reviewed by users. (Could be a festival, outdoors activity like horse back riding, etc).
• CITY: Set of cities with a profile
• COUNTRY: A country with a profile in the system. A person should be able to see what cities are in a country
• LOCATIONS: Locations reviewed by users. (Restaurants, clubs, museums, etc)
• TRIP REVIEW: Set of reviews written by users. A user can see his reviews.
• USER: Set of user’s with an account 

Relations

• city : city that the trip review refers to
• country: the country where the city is located
• explores: users browse through cities to explore sites of interests and see their friends' reviews
• knows: A users can “add” other users to see their trips and reviews
• lived in: users keep track of the cities they have lived in
• messages: users can send messages to inquire about reviews / trips
• reviews: users add reviews of their trips