GR1 - User & Task Analysis

User Personas

User 1: Physics graduate student "Martha"

• Age/Gender: 24/Female
• Education: Two B.A.s at U.C. Berkeley, currently pursuing Ph.D. at Purdue U
• Culture: Chinese/American
• Language: English
• Physical limitations: -
• Computer experience: interacting with a terminal and using a smartphone, basic Windows experience
• Motivation: Plan errands and optimize daily routine
• Domain experience: -
• Application experience: uses a task list and google calendar on her phone
• Work environment: graduate student office, experimental physics lab
• Communication patterns: sends texts, emails and uses video skype.  Uses phone if these other mechanisms fail.

 Martha is a 24 year old physics graduate student, pursuing a Ph.D. in the Midwest.  Like most graduate students, Martha spends most of her time in the lab, but completes her errands when she has enough of them built up.  Martha uses a personal whiteboard to manage her TODO list.  When she decided to do errands, she copies the whiteboard to a post-it note and then goes down the post-it note in order.  Most of the time, Martha's roommate Rachael asks her to do some common area tasks, like buy paper towels, liquor, and such.  When this happens, Rachael will give Martha another TODO list, and Martha will use both of them for the errand run.