ContextualInquiry:GroupC
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
Contents |
[edit] Team Members
Christine Shih
Rabia Siddiqi
Hak-Seung Kim
Umber Masood
Michael Chen
[edit] Team Member Contributions
All team members met together 2 times. In our initial meeting we developed the contextual interview and assigned interview subjects. Each person was assigned one person to inteview, for a total of four. The following week we reconvened and finished the rest of the assignment.
[edit] Problem and Solution Overview
It's hard to find and/or publicize events on campus. Flyering is largely ineffective, and e-mails are lost in the average student's inbox. Successful and persistent advertising, on the other hand, may be deemed as too aggressive, and cause resentment towards a group. A centralized, searchable events database, held online, would alleviate this advertising problem. Events would be non-obtrusively advertised, and by enabling a search function, members of UC Berkeley will browse only for events that hold their interest. Our target user group, the students, staff, and faculty of Berkeley, encompass a wide variety of people with diverse interests, and need to accommodate all of them. Multiple personas would be using this application, including the incoming freshman, the exiting senior, both a novice and established professor, and the exploration-seeking graduate student.
[edit] Contextual Inquiry - Interview Descriptions
For the contextual inquiry procedure, we divided the interview into two different parts. First, we asked the users some questions about the effectiveness of promoting and finding campus events. Then we gave them the task of finding an event while we observed.
[edit] Contextual Inquiry Procedure
[edit] Questionnaire
1. Rate these publicity methods based on their effectiveness on getting you to go to an event on a scale from 0-5, with 0 being worthless, and 5 being 100% effective.
[ ] Flyers
[ ] E-mail Mailing List
[ ] Class Announcement
[ ] Chalkboard Advertisement
[ ] Friend
[ ] Facebook
[ ] Organization Website
[ ] Club Announcement
2. Which of these have you used to promote events?
[ ] Flyers
[ ] E-mail Mailing List
[ ] Class Announcement
[ ] Chalkboard Advertisement
[ ] Friend
[ ] Facebook
[ ] Organization Website
[ ] Club Announcement
[ ] I've never promoted any events
Which methods were most effective for you?
3. How many extracurriculars are you actively involved in?
1 2 3 4 5 6+
4. How many on-campus events do you attend in a month? (Performances, film screening, seminars, etc.)
1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10+
[edit] Situational Tasks
You know you're going to have some free time this weekend, and you'd like to do something fun.
1. What type of campus event would you most likely attend?
2. How would you find out about events going on around campus?
3. Your cell phone broke. In case you previously did not use the internet, how would you find events online?
[edit] Contextual Inquiry Test Subjects and Results
Because of the broad scope of our intended design, we needed to interview a large range of subjects. Thus, all 5 of us chose 1 person each to interview: 2 seniors, 1 freshman, 1 professor, and 1 graduate student.
[edit] J
J is a senior in Bioengineering. He is graduating this semester, with a job offer lined up. Because of this, he is not so much interested in looking for new clubs or societies to involve himself in, and is much more interested in looking for one-time fun events. He has also had experience as president of moderate-sized engineering club.
J finds club announcements and Facebook generally effective to get him to come to events, but as an established senior, he values his friends the most when learning about new events. Although his club has used nearly every publicity event available, J finds that word-of-mouth is still the most effective publicity. A very active student, he is a part of four extracurriculars and attends many on-campus events. Being very familiar with Berkeley online services, he regularly checks the berkeley.edu, Cal Performances, and Superb calendars, and uses the Daily Cal to look out for fun events.
[edit] B
B is a freshman MCB major. While she is actively involved in the student homecoming team, she is still looking for new activities and avenues of exploration.
B believes that mailing lists, friends, facebook, and club announcements are generally the most effective publicity methods. However, out of the methods she herself has used to promote events, handing out flyered balloons seemed to be more effective. She is involved in four extracurriculars and attends only one on-campus event each month. When asked to find an event, she chose to search for a dance event and described going on facebook and searching through the events using club names.
[edit] G
G is an EECS senior, and is aged 29. Because of his age gap, his interests are slighty different from the average college student. He is not actively involved in any clubs or societies, and came to Berkeley as a transfer students. G enjoys Cal Performances, and checks his e-mail 5 times a day.
G thinks that friends and class announcements were the most effective publicity methods and out of methods he has used himself, he believed word of mouth from friends was the most effective. He is involved in two extracurricular and attends about three events per month. When asked to find an event, he chose to search for films and Cal Performances and used the Cal Performance and BMF websites and email reminders in order to find the events.
[edit] P
P is a graduate student in Bioengineering. She currently is working on her thesis, and spends most of her time at UCSF. While her interests may seem more focused on academic development, she also enjoys musical and stage performances at Cal.
P believes that friends and club announcements were the best ways to promote sites and the most effective out of the ones she has used in the past we also the same. She is only involved in one extracurricular, but attend approximately four events per month. When asked to find an event, she searched for musical events and seminars. To find a music event, she searched the Berkeley.edu website for music. This search brought up the Cal Performances website, so she went there and found a musical event that was advertised on the first page. For seminars, she relies on the many mailing lists that she has signed up for.
[edit] K
K is a professor in a small engineering department. Teaching both undergraduate and graduate classes, K also organizes many academic seminars and guest lectures. An academic, he is not interested in the "social scene," and dislikes weekend events.
K considers flyers, mailing lists, class announcements, chalkboard advertisements, and friends to be effective. His personal experience says that emails and flyers are the most useful methods. He is involved in six or more extracurriculars and attends ten or more events in a month. When asked to find an event, he looked for academic events occurring during the weekdays. He used the Berkeleyan newspaper and email in order to locate an events. He does not tend to use most online forms of event listing because he does not want to filter through various student events that are not of interest to him.
[edit] Task Analysis Questions
1.) Who is going to use this system?
- We intend to make the system available to student group officers and faculty at the UC Berkeley want to promote their events as well as anyone who is interested in finding events occurring on campus.
2.) What tasks do they now perform?
- In order to promote or find events on campus, group officers, faculty and students currently rely on flyer, mailing lists, class announcements, chalkboard advertisements, organization websites, club announcements, facebook, and friends.
3.) What tasks are desired?
- It would be more efficient for both event promoters and those who are searching for events to be able to submit and access all campus events at one place.
4.) How are the tasks learned?
- The tasks are mostly intuitive and involve browsing and searching events on a website that is easy to follow. There will also be "help" buttons available on most pages to better how to use the system.
5.) Where are the tasks performed?
- The tasks are performed on a website that can be accessed online through any web browser.
6.) What's the relationship between the user and the data?
- Users both create and access the data, in the form of event information.
7.) What other tools does the customer have?
- As described in question 2, the tools that are currently used to find and promote events include, flyer, mailing lists, class announcements, chalkboard advertisements, organization websites, club announcements, facebook, and friends.
8.) How do customers communicate with each other?
- The customers can communicate with each other through our website by submitting events for others to see, and by emailing submitters to find out more about events.
9.) How often are the tasks performed?
- Student groups and faculty can access the website to submit their events whenever they have events to promote. Those who are looking for events, can perform the tasks whenever they have free time and wish to attend an event.
10.) What are the time constraints on the task?
- To find an event should take about 5 minutes, and to find an event should take about 30 minutes to submit it. Submitted events should appear immediately on the website.
11.) What happens when things go wrong?
- If the user makes a mistake, there will be error messages informing them how to correct it. If the website malfunctions, users will be able to inform the webmasters through email.
[edit] Analysis of Tasks
[edit] Easy Tasks
- Finding Today's Events
- A user that suddenly finds him/herself with free time should be able to, with a minimal number of clicks, list all fun events that are taking place tonight.
- Finding a specific group's events (Ex: PASAE)
- A user should be able to search immediately for a specific group, and be able to find all that group's events.
[edit] Moderate Tasks
- Getting an e-mail reminder
- A user should be able to request to receive a reminder for an event.
- Entering a group event
- Users representing a group or organization need to easily create events and have their events immediately available and searchable.
[edit] Hard Tasks
- Search based on multiple criteria
- We anticipate a very large number of events being submitted, and so users should be able to filter out events based on multiple criteria, such as event type, location, and target user major.
- Create an account with posting privileges
- Anonymous posting of events would create chaos, so users that wish to submit event information would need to create an account in order to keep users accountable and lend legitimacy to the posting.
[edit] Proposed Design
[edit] Design Logistics
Based upon our interviews, we decided that event type selection was our most important feature, given the huge range of events that all of our users preferred. Being able to select among the multitude of events would be our top priority, achieved with a sidebar listing different types of events, as well as a search function to quickly find specific events. Quick, accurate submission of events and legitamacy of events was also high on our list.
[edit] Design Analysis
[edit] Individuals and organizations who would be interested in using the website
The individuals and organizations who will be interested in using the website and who will benefit from using the website will mainly be the Berkeley campus community. This includes undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. It also includes academic departments on campus and student organizations. The website will be used to advertise guest lectures, academic seminars, cultural events, performances, community events, student organization events, and career related events (such as infosessions and job fairs). In addition, the website can be used by prospective students, staff, and faculty who would like to attend campus events; they may want to experience the campus environment.
[edit] Advantages to event organizers
By having a website that advertises all campus events, the need for event organizers to publicize through other means, such as fliers, will be eliminated. The use of the website will also be economically advantageous to individuals and organizations wanting to publicize their event(s) because they no longer will need to incur the costs associated with making fliers and posters. Furthermore, the use of the website will come at no cost to event organizers. Event organizers will save time and man-hours used to publicize events because they no longer will need to make class announcements. Because the website will be the only one of its kind used by all event organizers to advertise their events, event organizers will know that they are reaching the relevant and widespread audience. The website will allow for event organizers to give information that cannot be conveyed by fliers or chalkboard advertisements, such as providing a map of the event location or including a link to an online map. Some student groups advertise events on campus by passing out quarter sheets containing information about an event they are organizing; however, students passing by often do not like to receive such notices of events. This advertising technique is inefficient and may be irrelevant.
[edit] Advantages to users
By using such a website, the users can eliminate the time in searching for events of interest. The website will be easy to navigate and will be complete listing of events. Because the website will feature a listing of all campus events, users don’t need to spend unnecessary time in searching for events advertised through other means. Users will be able to use one website to learn about events of interest. Users will be able to search for specific events according to their interest. The website will be constantly updated so that users know of changes in event details, such as location, time, and cancellations. The website will allow users to view the location of campus events, which will be especially useful to those who are not familiar with the campus. Because of the widespread use of the Internet on campus, the users will be able to access the website any time they want. Events are often advertised on bulletin boards, yet old fliers may remain; the website will prevent past events from being advertised. Certain events that currently get advertised on campus sometimes do not reach the intended audience; the website inform all users who want to know of a certain type of event.
[edit] Advantages to the campus community, in general
The website will greatly reduce the use of paper in advertising events. As such, the amount of paper waste (natural resource) will be eliminated. The website is an environment friendly method to advertise events. The use of one website as a complete listing of events will encourage the building of the campus community.
[edit] How the website is different from existing systems
The website is different from existing systems in many ways. For example, some student organizations publicize their events through facebook. However, these events are not searchable. A facebook could not search for such events by, for example, time or location, which they will be able to do using a website that we are proposing. Also, events advertised through facebook are only advertised to facebook users who belong to a certain facebook group; facebook users not part of the group may not learn of the event because they are not part of the group. In addition, the Engineers’ Joint Council has a calendar of events on their website on which student engineering groups can post their events. However, the calendar is not widely used by student groups. Also, many students do not know of the calendar. Also, the calendar is only specific to events advertised by student engineering groups and does not include events that may be advertised by other student groups. The website that we are proposing will be a complete listing of all campus events; not just those that interest a certain group of users.
Comment: Hi guys, have you checked out events.berkeley.edu? I think the system you are designing is very much like that system. Roland Saekow
