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Users will need to be able to save the information they find important as they read through updates in their news feeds. It should be noted that the term "save" may end up being misleading. The user's intent is to make it possible to revisit the item in question in the future. Saving it somewhere is one way of doing it, and how files are managed on the desktop. The exact implementation of this feature may be a less conventional model, such as tagging like what users can do with emails in Gmail to make them easily accessible later. Prototyping and testing will shed more light on which approach will be easiest for users to learn.
- What does the user need to know or have before doing the task? They need to be logged in, and know which item they want to save.
- Where is the task performed? Either on a desktop/laptop, or on a phone browser.
- What is the environment like? Noisy, dirty, dangerous? It could be, if the user is on the go with their smartphone or tablet.
- How often is the task performed? This depends on the user’s profile; some may do it all the time, others only once or twice per session. It depends on how willing they are to categorize information. Some people use similar features (like bookmarks or the "Read it later" feature of browser addons like Readability or Instapaper) commonly, others not at all; and this mentality will carry over.
- What are its time/resource constraints? It should be fast, no more than a few seconds. The user does not have time to read the article in question now, so it is possible they may also not have a lot of time to save it. Even if they have time, they will want to get back to articles they are interested in as soon as they can; reading is more fun than organizing.
- How is the task learned? The user can learn it by recognition; the interface should be familiar (like existing methods of archiving information, like folders in operating systems, or tags in Gmail)
- What can go wrong? The user could save the wrong item by accident (in which case they could delete it later). The user could forget to save something they want to save (and they could recover by using the filtering feature to find it again).
- Who else is involved in the task? No one else in this case.
- What subtasks are there? Selecting the item to save, categorizing it into an appropriate area, and finding it to read again later.
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