Task Scenario #1: Megan sets up a new calendar
Megan is very exited to discover that there is a new system available on campus that will allow her to quickly and easily create a calendar for the CalPirg website. She sets up an account on the system, designs her calendar, and sets it up on her website.
Steps:
- Megan goes to the calendar management tool and is able to create a user ID and password for CalPirg because it is a registered student group.
- Megan logs on with her user ID and password and begins to format her calendar.
- She sets Calendar Administration options such as (for example):
- Calendar Name/Description
- Allow event time conflicts/don’t allow event time conflicts
- Calendar View Range (or unlimited range)
- Calendar Title, Header, and Footer
- She sets Display options such as (for example):
- Display Width
- Time Display Format (12 or 24 hour clock)
- First Day of Week
- How to Display Week & Month Names
- How to Display Week Number
- Display Weekends
- Default Display Style
- Calendar vs. List
- Day, Week, Month, or Year display
- Absolute or Sliding Positioning
- Position of Navigation, Style, and Edit bars
- Set colors and fonts
- Include School holidays?
- Include a Cascading Style Sheet?
- She sets Event Type categories
- She sets Security options, creating user IDs and passwords for all users who can edit the calendar.
- She hits the "publish" button which allows her to preview her newly designed calendar and gives her the URL where it is stored on the Calendar server.
- She edits the CalPirg webpage to add the link to their new calendar.
Task Scenario #2: Nina adds a new event
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies Program Director has just given Nina a list of several new events that he has planned for the coming semester. One event in particular, a talk being given by the former U.S. Ambassador to Israeli, is of great interest to their members. Nina wants to get these events into their calendar and send an email out to their mailing list right away to inform their members about these exciting upcoming events.
Steps:
- Nina logs onto the Calendar Management Tool.
- She finds and opens a new Add Event form.
- Nina enters the information on each event, making sure to select the option that triggers an email about the upcoming events to their members.
- Nina previews her calendar and does a visual inspection of the newly added events to make sure that they are displayed properly.
Task Scenario #3: Megan sets up a filter to receive events from other departments
Megan has been using the new campus calendar system for some time now, and has decided that it is time to find out if there are other events on campus that might be of interest to her organization's members. She decides to subscribe to events that meet certain criteria. She can then review and decide whether or not to post these events to her calendar.
Steps:
- Megan logs onto the Calendar Management Tool.
- She sets her filters to receive all campus events with the word "Environment" in the title or description.
- She indicates that she wants to view and approve the incoming events before they go live on her calendar.
- Megan checks her queue to see what campus events met her criteria.
Task Scenario #4: Harold approves and declines events
Harold has set up his filters to make sure he receives the events which the UC website may want to post. He receives about 30 events a day, about 75% of which he publishes. It is Monday and time for him to approve events that may have come in over the weekend. He has also been informed that a presentation on the NewsCenter that his staff will be putting on this week has been moved to a different room, so he must change the location of that event on the calendar.
Steps:
- Harold logs onto the Calendar Management Tool.
- He sees several events that he knows he should approve just by seeing the title and department, so he chooses those events and approves them. The events go live on his calendar.
- He is unsure whether a Political Science event in his queue should be posted to the calendar, so he clicks on it to view more detail. He realizes it is a high-profile talk that should be on the UC site, so he approves it.
- Harold has to remember to change the room of the NewsCenter presentation that his staff is organizing, so he decides to do that now. He sorts this list of events on his calendar by date and easily finds the event. He chooses it, changes the room and saves the event. It is immediately updated in his calendar, and all calendars that are dynamically generated by the Calendar Management tool.
Revisions to Personas/Task Analysis
We decided to eliminate the persona of Sally McNeil primarily because looking at the task table, it seemed that she had essentially the same frequency and importance ratings of the tasks as Harold Jackson. Initially we thought it would be important to have both a persona that was an event aggregator as well as a persona that was an event creator and frequent distributor, but we realized that we could change Harold's persona to also create some events of his own and fill that function. We also changed his background to make him more like Sally: a completely high-level user who needed to handle events with parent-child relationships and wanted to use cascading style sheets.
The task table remained essentially the same, but we removed Sally McNeil's tasks.
Persona #2 - Harold Jackson
Technology level: High
Interest in sharing events: High
Unique situation: Campus Event Aggregator (with a few events of their own), wants to use CSS, needs to be able to indicate parent/child events
Harold Jackson is a 40-year-old Program Manager in the Public Relations office of the UC. He is a Los Angeles native who enjoys walking his dog and playing tennis with his wife, who is also a programmer. He is responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the UC website and Calendar of Events. It is essential that the website project a professional image, as it is an important means of advertising the university to the general public, alumni and potential donors. Harold has extensive web programming experience, and his website is currently dynamically generated. He works with a java programmer on the website, and both of them are familiar with XML. Harold and most of his group use calendaring systems such as Outlook or iCal. They also use the CalAgenda calendaring system to schedule meetings.
Harold’s ultimate goal in relation to the campus calendar is to publicize as many important events occurring on the UC campus as possible, and to highlight especially important events on the website. His groups sometimes organizes public relations events of their own as well. Currently events are submitted to the university calendar via a web form, and not many departments presently enter their events in this fashion. As a result, Harold’s staff has to spend time contacting various departments to find interesting events to post to their calendar. Harold thinks that if he could somehow find a way make it easier for campus departments and organizations to send him events, he could greatly increase the number of events he would receive and be able to publicize. In evaluating a new system, however, he would want to ensure that it is at a minimum an improvement over the current system in terms of functionality, and offers a design that integrates with the overall UC website. To accomplish this goal, he would like to be able to maintain the appearance of the website using cascading style sheets. He would also need to be able to clearly list events which have parent-child relationships with other events, such as conferences and the daily presentations and talks which occur there.
Harold's Goals:
- Create a web-based calendar that will be the ultimate aggregator of all events at his university, which will be used by the public as well as people at the university
- “Market” the university to potential contributors and the general public by highlighting the diverse and exciting events that occur there
- Ensure that the calendar looks professional and eye-catching, and integrates with the overall “look and feel” of the university website
- Publicize the public relations events of his department
- Make the process for entering and approving events as easy as possible so that even “low-tech” users in his department can do this
- Encourage other calendar owners to send him events
- Use cascading style sheets to maintain website look and feel
- Clearly list events that have a “parent-child” relationship on the website so that it is easy for visitors to find what they are looking for (e.g. Conferences during which many different daily presentations occur)
Task Analysis
| Task | Katie Richardson | Harold Jackson | Nina Sanchez | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create a Calendar | Frequency | Importance | Frequency | Importance | Frequency | Importance |
| Design calendar appearance | Low | Low | Medium | High | Low | Medium |
| Set up calendar on website | Low | Low | Medium | High | Low | Medium |
| Manage Events | Frequency | Importance | Frequency | Importance | Frequency | Importance |
| Add Event | Low | High | High | High | Medium | High |
| Edit Event | Low | Medium | Medium | High | Medium | High |
| Delete Event | Low | Medium | Medium | High | Medium | High |
| Approve Events (entered by other users) | Low | Medium | High | High | Low | Low |
| Publicize their events to other calendars | Medium | Medium | Low | Low | Low | Low |
| Review & post other calendars’ events | Low | Medium | High | High | Low | Low |
| Send email announcing event | Medium | High | Low | Low | High | High |
| Maintain listings of past events on website | Low | Low | Low | Low | High | High |
Comparative Analysis
Our team analyzed 8 calendaring systems including Microsoft Outlook, iCal, CalAgenda, Calendars.net, Web Event, Yahoo! Calendar, live.berkeley.edu, and Queer Berkeley. Although time only permitted the posting of data for three of these systems, the rest of the competitive analyses will be added as time permits.