GR1 - Project Proposal & Analysis

User Analysis

There are two user classes: fundraisers and donors.

Characteristics

  1. Fundraisers:
    • Ages: 17-22
    • Education: college student
    • Language: English
    • Technological skill: high
    • Motivation: connect to donors and ask for donation.
    • Constraint: usually don’t have time
  2. Donors:
    • Ages: varies, mostly above 18
    • Education: literate
    • Language: English
    • Technological skill: varies, but know how to use a Smartphone
    • Motivation: want to donate to a cause, whether it be personal interest or because of requests.
    • Constraint: usually don’t have time and online account at social donating site.

Personas

  • Fundraisers who set up/own the cause

A is a junior at MIT who is involved in a non-profit organization that organizes service projects over the summer. He knows exactly the details of the project, including the budget, and wants to raise money to support his project. However, being an MIT student who has a million activities on his hand, he does not have much time to organize as many fundraising events on campus as he would want to. He wants to reach out to his families and friends who are not in the area, as well as general philanthropists that might be interested in the cause that his project embraces. He hopes that there is a fast way for him to reach out to them without having to send individual email and a convenient way for his parents to donate money without having to create an online account at some social site.

  • Supporters of the cause who don’t necessarily know much about it - want to help spread the words

E is very interested about non-profits and interest groups. He receives regular emails about projects and non-profits. He, however, doesn’t know everything about them. Most emails are useful to know about what these interest groups do but E is more interested to know the organization and about the impact of his donation, if ever he donates. E is a very busy Harvard student and he’d appreciate it more if he can learn about causes of non-profits and the impacts of his donations in a much closer context simply by using the web or his mobile phone. Nonetheless, he is interested in spreading the word of non-profits and believes that even if he cannot donate, he can at least spread the word to others. He would like to use social media and the internet to spread the word about a specific cause or causes.

  • Donors who are invited to donate to a specific cause

B is friends with many people in a student group that raises money to save whales. B is very busy, in between juggling, swimming, part-time jobs, and an MIT courseload, so even though he feels very strongly about the cause, he just doesn’t have time to attend clubs meetings or events. Thus, even though he friends ask him to donate, he doesn’t know when or how to do so. B wants to be able to find the specific cause that he was invited to donate to in a fast and simple manner so that he can contribute to a cause even if he doesn’t have the time to spend on it.

  • Donors who don’t have a specific cause in mind - want to search

M is a wealthy MIT alum and she knows that at her time as an MIT undergraduate, there were many struggling student groups trying to make a difference. M wants to give back to the MIT community, so she wants to find worthy causes that might be in need of a donation. She wants to be able to browse through a listing of causes that are currently in need of support, pick the one that she feels the strongest connection with, and make a safe and secure donation.

Task Analysis

Set up a cause
  • Goal: Put a cause into system
  • Precondition(s):
    • Users need to have the app downloaded.
  • Subtasks:
    • Open the app
    • Create the cause by clicking on the “Create a Cause” button.
    • Fill in information about the cause, including description, budget, and contacts
    • Check in boxes for categories that the project is in (for searching purposes)
Invite people
  • Goal: Invite people to read a specific cause
  • Precondition(s):
    • Users have to have the cause open
    • Cause must already be setup by an interest group
  • Subtasks:
    • Invite specific person or all contacts from phone
    • Share information about cause to contacts or friends
  • What can go wrong:
    • Invitee does not exist
    • User has no list of friends to invite
  • What are its time or resource constraints:
    • You can invite a person once a day
Donate
  • Goal: Pledge any amount of money to a charity
  • Precondition(s):
    • Need to be in a specific cause
    • Have a billing account information
    • Must donate to a cause already set up
  • Subtasks:
    • Pick a specific cause of the charity
    • Enter the amount of donation
    • Enter billing information, if not stored
  • What can go wrong:
    • Billing information is incorrect
    • Pledge amount is invalid
  • What are its time or resource constraints:
    • Can only donate to one cause/charity at a time
  • Goal: Find a cause that fits your interests
  • Precondition(s):
    • Causes that are looking for a donation have a page set up
    • Relevant causes must be displayed in a list/easy to read format
    • Causes must have a relevant name or description to distinguish them
    • Causes displayed must be valid and current
  • Subtasks:
    • Search by title or keyword
    • Search by description
    • Filter results
    • Bookmark favorites
  • What can go wrong:
    • Search engine is really bad and user can’t find what they’re looking for
    • User finds and tries to donate to a cause that isn’t looking for donations/doesn’t exist anymore
  • What are its time or resource constraints:
    • Can only search one thing at a time
    • Takes a bit of time to search through all entries
Set up a profile
  • Goal: Describe yourself, put in preferences, and save searches
  • Precondition(s):
    • User is a frequent visitor
  • Subtasks:
    • Create username and password
    • Sign in and out
    • Add text description
    • Put up profile picture
    • Save favorite charities
    • Save keywords to get notification of new charities that match keyword
    • Enter ‘About Me’ and ‘Preferences’
    • Set up automatic monthly donations
  • How the task is learned learned:
    • Directions on the application (a button that says ‘Sign In’ or ‘Register’, a line saying ‘type in description’)
    • Past experience
  • What can go wrong:
    • User forgets username and/or password
    • User forgets to cancel monthly donations
  • What are its time or resource constraints:
    • Takes time to make profile
    • Each user can only set up one profile
    • Takes time to sign in and out
  • No labels

1 Comment

  1. Sacha Zyto

    Good stretches:

    • mobile app (particularly relevant here since people get solicited in unexpected places, and stg they always have handy is they phone)
    • targeting outside communities (philanthropists).

    Did you get a chance to interview one user from each population class ?. If so, what did you learn from them and what does this imply in terms of constraints on your app/UI ? (remember: You are not the user).  For example, for the casual donors, what are the current problem w/ Is it rather a wrong place wrong time , or a "I need to think about it  without being in front of you”,  or "How am I sure that my money will serve that cause ?".

    Task analysis: "Set up a profile" isn't a high-level user goal (although it might be a necessary precondition).

    Project scope is probably too large for a term project: You should on producing an excellent UI that serves fewer user categories/scenarios but serves them very well. For this, you first need to find some requirements by interviewing users. Before next GR, make sure you interview the people from the user population that will have to use your app, or you might miss stg really big. Put them mentally in the context, so that you can try to see what they like, what they don't, what would make them feel comfortable when using a app for donations.

    On the other hand, I don't see anything in the project that's MIT specific: The same statement could be made about any university: It's important that you try not think not in terms of "MIT" in order to put you in the state of mind that "you are not the user". If it helps to use a name for the university, don't use MIT.

    You mentioned not having to sending individual emails, but contact people individually (or conveying that impression) responsibilizes them. (look at chap 2 of "Building successful online communities" http://kraut.hciresearch.org/content/books  if you're interested)
    web of trust problem: implicit if you go w/ friends and families, in which case a possible solution in order to leverage a large user population and to avoid spending too much time on the backend would be to build your app on top of a social network app.
    visibility/traceability (i.e. what's my donation used for): could be interesting to explore / borrow design ideas apps that have those typical problems: retirement funds, grants.gov

    "You can invite a person once a day ?" (why? too early at this stage to focus on specific details)

    Overall, a very interesting project with lots of potential.