| Table of Contents |
|---|
User Analysis
John the Student
...
In terms of education, there are several kinds of documents involved in teacher-student interactions:
- presentations
- prep documents (unseen)
- handouts
- assignments
- instructor to instructor communication
His advice is to watch out for importing and exporting, since it's almost never done right.
...
What blogging word processors currently do well:*
- easy to just write different paragraphs and put down your thoughts into text without any special formatting or using other media
How blogging word processors can be improved:*
- Would like shortcuts and more intuitive sections
- Would like to be able to embed images easily and meaningfully
- anchoring images to its position on the page, rather than letting them float or placing them inline with text
Task Analysis
There are three main tasks associated with solving our problem. They are as follows:
Writing Content
- Why is the task being done?##
- We want the user to be able to know what part of the paper he’s editing. For instance, MS word and TinyMCE are actually written in XML with some very complicated parsing to display what they see. We want the user to be able, intuitively, to be able to have different sections (headers, paragraphs) and be able to format these later easily (so all the paragraphs or headers can looks similar)
- What does the user need to know before doing the task?## The
- The user should need to know nothing except what he wants to write. The interface should be intuitive enough that the sections will make sense without knowledge of how the backend actually works.
- Where is the task performed?##
- We would have some kind of backend in HTML (or something) that would have the different types of sections (paragraph, header, title) and therefore be able to format each type of section later on, so that layouts can be applied easily to the whole document.
- What is the environment like?##
- Ideally the environment would be like any other word processor, but easier to understand how to use the formatting tools at hand.
- How often is the task performed?##
- The task is performed whenever the user needs to create a new document of any kind (e.g. blog, paper, report, presentation).
- What are its time or resource constraints?##
- The resource constraints are whatever the user needs to input, and the time constraints are whatever deadline the user has.
- How is the task learned?##
- The task is learned by having the sections displayed very obviously when inputting content. We could have different boxes the user might want to type into show up (navigable by shortcuts or tabs, for advanced users) with some kind of nesting structure being provided by indents or boldness of outline (if nesting is relevant to the section involved)
- What can go wrong?##
- It might become something as hard to understand as TinyMCE or Word’s input process if we don’t make the different sections intuitive enough.
- Who else is involved in the task?##
- Only the user should be involved with the task (unless the audience is considered, but that shouldn’t be part of inputting the content)
Formatting and Layout
- Why is the task being done?
- Users should be able to control the layout and appearance of content on the page.
- What does the user need to know before doing the task?
- The user needs to know what sections he wrote in the input part of the process in order to be able to know what kind of section he’s formatting in the the layout application part. It needs to be very clear what different sections he created in the “writing content” phase in order to format the layout properly
- Where is the task performed?
- The task will be performed inside the processor/editor, either by applying default layouts or creating a custom layout.
- What is the environment like?
- Again the environment will be a lot like microsoft word or TinyMC, but we might have the layout section look something more like MS powerpoint’s layout application.
- How often is the task performed?
- It depends on the user. Some people like to format content as they are writing it, and others want to finish writing first and then go back and change how it looks. The interface should allow both of those things.
- What are its time or resource constraints?
- Formatting should be quick and be minimally distracting from the content of the document. Poor formatting wastes the readers’ time because it might make the content hard to read.
- How is the task learned?
- One of the biggest problems we are trying to solve is that the way current word processors handle formatting internally is very opaque to the user, and often the editor does things that don’t make sense unless one understands the representation. We want to make sure that the user understands how their text is being handled by either changing the internal representation to better match the user’s model or by teaching/showing the user what is happening.
- What can go wrong?
- Often people complain about how layout options in programs like MS word often do unexpected things, and sometimes auto-formatting does things the user doesn’t want. We want to make absolutely sure nothing unexpected happens during editing.
- Who else is involved in the task?
- The user is the only person directly involved with the task, unless he has a publisher helping him to format the text he wrote in the “writing content” part of the workflow.
Embedding Media
- Why is the task being done?
- In order to supplement the content written and enhance understanding. Also, sometimes the content will be focused around describing or explaning a certain item of media.
- What does the user need to know before doing the task?
- What media they want to include, and where they want to place it in the document. If the media is something they have created like a video or image, they must create it first and be able to access it.
- Where is the task performed?
- The task will be performed in the same location that the content editing and layout is happening.
- What is the environment like?
- The environment should look like a document so that the user knows what to expect when he or she is done editing.
- How often is the task performed?
- It depends on the user and type of media. Images are inserted into documents fairly often, but videos might be used less often.
- What are its time or resource constraints?
- Everything should happen fairly instantly so that the interface is easy to “play around” with. That way the user can try lots of different layout options to see which one they like the most. The only time restriction is the time it takes to upload a file, which can be significant for something like a large video.
- How is the task learned?
- The interface should make the different media options apparent so that even a user that hasn’t used them before can know how to embed media. Our target audience won’t want to read a manual on how to use the program.
- What can go wrong?
- When the media being included is from another website or remote source (like a youtube video) we might have to deal with situations where the user doesn’t have permissions to use the media, or the media has disappeared since being embedded. Since files are stored separately from the document text, it’s possible that they might be corrupted, and so the interface should fail gracefully in that situation. In terms of usability, people often complain that the image/media layout options in programs like MS word aren’t predictable enough. Our aim is to make sure that the user is always in control of what happens, or at least can predict what his actions will result in.
- Here are some internet comics about this issue:
- Who else is involved in the task?
- If the person who created the media being embedded is different from the person editing the document, both people are somewhat involved. However, the media creator shouldn’t need to be involved except when issues of copyright and similar arise.