GR1 - User and Task Analysis

User Analysis

Our representative users are taken from industry (Boingo, IBM), government (DOD), and academia (MIT). In general, users want an interface that is intuitive, interactive, and efficient. Users depend on data visualization to draw conclusions from complex data and make informed, time-sensitive decisions, so safety is an important usability aspect. Because users are generally experts with the software and depend on it for their day-to-day work, we may often choose efficiency over learnability when there is a tradeoff.

Industry: IBM is seeking an improved user interface for Analyst's Notebook, one that can compete with the more user-friendly Palantir software. Boingo needs to analyze data to build its new WiFi network in Africa, and needs a good way to visualize a combination of data sets across the continent. In general, it is important that analysts in industry can use data visualizations in reports to managers and higher-level executives.

Government: We will be collaborating with U.S. Army officers who use both Palantir and Analyst's Notebook for mission-critical decision making. One of the problems they face is the inefficiency of using two different tools, as their supporting databases are incompatible. They wish to use the superior computational tools of Analyst's Notebook, but also have an interface that can more clearly and efficiently visualize data trends.

Our representative users are from a civil affairs unit, rather than combat. They will be primarily concerned with promoting development and preventing conflict in third-world countries. They are trained to use the software before deployment, so they will have time to become expert users. Officers also analyze data to plan their missions. For soldiers deployed overseas under stressful and life-threatening conditions, efficiency is key.

Academia: Data analysis is an important part of research in many fields. In particular, research about international development in Africa has clear ties to the above mentioned users in industry and government. Our representative user from MIT is a graduate student working on development in Africa, who will use the interface we design to help advise our industry and government users.

One important design consideration is that different users want to see different levels of granularity in the data. For example, an Army major would want to see more technical details while a colonel may be more concerned with qualitative trends; similarly with an engineer versus a top executive in industry. In academia, researchers may want to look at data on many levels to draw connections between data trends.

Task Analysis

With the back-end and database support provided by IBM, we will focus on designing effective ways to visualize data in a way that allows users to see relationships between large amounts of data efficiently. Standard data visualization tools are available from open-source libraries such as processing.js. We will select a few visualization methods (e.g. web, map, graph) to focus on, geared toward understanding the data sets for WiFi in Africa. Some high-level tasks include:

1. Seeing relationships between data sets: It should be easy for users to modify one aspect of the visualization and see the effects in realtime.
   1. Manipulation: This can include tasks like dragging and dropping, zooming, and panning, which will allow the user to see information in the most efficient way.
   2. Realtime: The user should be able to change the values of one datapoint, and see how that effects the entire visualization in a meaningful way.
2. Sharing and collaborating on visualizations: Analysts may want to share their visualization with superiors and co-workers and collaborate on certain projects.
   1. Collaborating: Users often need to annotate data, making notes both for themselves and to share with others. They will need the ability to insert text comments, highlight parts of the visualization, etc. We will be in communication with our representative users to pinpoint the features that will be most useful to them.
   2. Sharing: Users should be able to share their visualizations easily without having to export and import large amounts of information.