User Analysis
There are two main characteristics of We've observed the following characteristics in our user population:
- They frequently access the internet their information sources using mobile devices frequently. For example, half example all of our interviewees use mention using either their phones , and the other half use a Kindle Fire or tablets to read information.
- They like reading information from sources that often produce high volumes of updates. For example, Twitter and/or Facebook are used by all the people we interviewed, and they all had complaints about the high volumes of updates. Reddit and RSS feeds from Google reader were also examples we found through our interviews.
- They access the Internet using one or more devices. Three broad categories of devices are computers, smartphones, and tablets. The usage of computers to read information over the Web is common, but the use of smartphones is less so. These users are willing to pay additional money to gain the ability to consume data on the go: first, by buying a smartphone instead of a cheaper feature phone; and second, by purchasing a data plan from a carrier, which has wider coverage than Wi-Fi, but costs more for the same amount of data. The most enthusiastic users use unlimited data plans and resist carriers' attempts to move them over to limited plans. They may also buy data plans for tablets. These actions distinguish them from other smartphone users who might only be interested in email and business communication, and those who are happy to stick with Wi-Fi and not use the smartphone when a Wi-Fi network is not available. They make substantial effort to expand their ability to consume information.
- They are interested in staying up-to-date using information streams with more content than they are willing/able to read. These information streams include, but are not limited to, status updates (published to followers) on social websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, social news with comments on aggregators (available to everyone) such as Reddit and Hacker News, RSS feeds, and targetted messages (only available to parties enumerated by the sender) like email and private messages on Facebook. A key idea is that they demand information from a large array of sources; someone who only uses the Internet for email would not derive much utiltity from our project.
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- tend to read their information in a wide range of environments and time limits. Interviewee 3 reads his information everywhere except the shower, and mentions that he likes to use his time reading information as break from work. Interviewee 4 reads her information at home and on the go. Interviewee 2 reads her information at home and at work. We observed through our interviews that our user population tends to fill their pockets of "free time" with reading information. For example, as taking short/long breaks at work or reading information on the go. As an observation separate from our interviews, we also frequently see potential users checking their smart phones during the following events: waiting for/standing in the elevator; before meetings/lectures; while on the train/plane/bus/etc. All of these events characterize a broad range in environment/time constraints for our users.
- They do a considerable amount of their filtering through information manually (note that this does not imply a considerable portion of their time, though this may be the case for some users as well). For example, interviewees 1 and 4 describe how they don't trust automatic filtering/suggesting, and feel that they are their own judge of important information. All interviewees mention having to skim titles/tweets/Facebook updates/etc. to figure out what they want to read in-depth. Though we don't aim to eliminate these issues, we seek to make this filtering process smoother and more automated when possible.
Our user population can be further divided into two classes based on how they deal with information overload; this problem can be defined as one having more information available than one is able to read in a reasonable time-frame (e.g. before the information becomes outdated or invalidated by new information).
- People who are overwhelmed. When they consume information over the web, they flip through all the sources they are interested in and read what they can, until they run out of time and have to fulfill other obligations. They may miss out on information that might be interesting to them, because they were busy reading other data in the time available. They realize that this situation is not optimal, but they do not have an easy method of improving it. For example, Interviewee 2 feels guilty when marking all the items she couldn't get to as read each day. She also told us that she would probably enjoy the experience more if she read fewer items in depth, rather than as many as possible. Users we spoke to who fell in this class expressed the desire for a way to enhance their online experienceexperience more if she read fewer items in depth, rather than as many as possible.
- People who attempt action to bring the information influx under control. One method is to "whitelist" sources of information and avoid subscribing to information sources that are less relevant. A user practicing this with blogs might add a subset to an RSS feed, and read only the information from the feed. Another is to consciously evaluate all information sources from a first impression, and skip over datums that are not interesting. For example, interviewee 4 skips over tweets from certain people, and interviewee 3 completely removed his Facebook account. The ad hoc nature of these "filters" leads to inefficiencies and user dissatisfaction. The RSS feed approach is not fully generalized (e.g. it doesn't include tweets or Facebook status updates) and offers no guidance in areas outside its scope. Manually picking out information to read is also inefficient; users would prefer to delegate repetitive work to the computer instead of doing it themselves. Users in this class were interested in a more sophisticated solutionthe information influx under control. One method is to "whitelist" sources of information and avoid subscribing to information sources that are less relevant. A user practicing this with blogs might add a subset to an RSS feed, and read only the information from the feed. Another is to consciously evaluate all information sources from a first impression, and skip over datums that are not interesting. For example, interviewee 4 skips over tweets from certain people, and interviewee 3 completely removed his Facebook account.
A related problem to information overload is the need to remember specific data and refer to them in the future. As the feeds a user subscribes to increases, it becomes harder to find a data remembering mechanism that handles all of them. There are two methods of handling this issue:
- Don't use technology to remember data; instead track it all mentally. People with good memories may find success with this approach, but it still requires a fair amount of overheaduse technology to remember data; instead track it all mentally. We've observed that users tend not to use this technique in favor of technology like online calendars and email todos. We learned in class that users have to put in considerable effort to get items into their long-term memory, making this technique difficult for users.
- Use existing technological solutions. The However, existing solutions are not complete. Some users may bookmark web pages, but bookmarked information tagged in this was does not propagate across devices, and most users do not organize it welland can easily become disorganized. In addition, some information feeds are not amenable to bookmarking ; for instance, you can't immediately bookmark a specific post on your Facebook news feed, and you would have to find a direct link to the post first. Another common mechanism is the use of (i.e. Facebook feeds). We observed in our interviews that some users utilize email as a TODO list, but this requires manual filtering when the todo emails get mixed with messages from others.
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- to separate "todos" from the rest of the inbox. In addition, the interviewee admitted that her email "todo" list technique is inefficient.
Task Analysis
We consider 6 high-level tasks related to our problem, 3 essential and 3 non-essential. We list the three non-essential tasks as a reminder that they still need to be implemented, even if they are not significant.
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