User Analysis
John the Student
John is a college junior currently taking classes in German, political science, and mechanical engineering. He frequently writes lengthy papers, both technical and non-technical, using Pages, Apple's word-processing application. He avoids Microsoft Word because the layout is too cluttered and making formatting changes is very difficult. With Pages, he can edit fonts easily, drag text and images around the document with less confusion, snap images to a grid, and insert multimedia content. However, Pages has its drawbacks too; for example, John manually inserts page numbers in his papers using text boxes because he cannot easily change page number styles from Roman numerals (i, ii, iii...) to Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3...).
When writing, John usually makes an outline using pen and paper, then types without formatting in Pages. He frequently moves entire sections of his paper around using copy/paste keyboard shortcuts, preferring that to dragging portions of text around the screen. After the writing has been mostly polished, he begins making formatting edits, such as inserting relevant diagrams or marking new sections.
John is most frustrated by the fact that, in long documents, changes to one section of a paper often affect everything else. Moving photos around the page is a particular problem; with current word processors, all images are placed relative to text, not to the location of the page - he wants to put a picture on the page, and make it stay there! When making formatting changes, he also wants to be able to preview the paper in different formats (i.e., in multiple columns, with different spacing, etc.) and pick the best one, rather than making changes and undoing them.
What word processors currently do well:
- snapping images to a grid
- changing fonts
How word processors can be improved:
- previewing formatting changes
- moving images around the screen easily
- anchoring images to its position on the page, rather than letting them float or placing them inline with text
Teacher
Blogger
Task Analysis
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