ASSIGNMENT
3: TASK SCENARIOS
We
developed four task scenarios, one for each of our personas.
Each persona had a distinct combination of high-frequency tasks,
so we felt it would be instructive to create a scenario for each
one. To
develop our scenarios, we referred back to our task
analysis table and focused on the high-frequency tasks, combining
them with aspects of each persona's personality.
Steve
Steep (Southwest Road Trip)
Darla Garcia (First Day of School)
Sarah Jones
(Typical College Day)
Jake Parker (Party
at The Vid)
Steve
Steep (Southwest Road Trip)
Last
summer, Steve and his girlfriend Gina took a three-week trip around
the southwestern United States visiting national parks and other
sights, including Death Valley, Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon.
They brought along their bikes and hiking gear so they could do
a lot of exploring at the places they visited. Steve also brought
along his camera phone, and he and Gina took hundreds of digital
photos with it during the trip. They could have the pictures automatically
transferred from the camera to the PhotoCat management system anywhere
in the southwest where these was a mobile phone reception. (When
he took pictures in some of the more remote regions, he’d
have to wait a day or two to have the photos uploaded.) Another
nice feature was he could mark some of the uploaded photos as publicly
viewable on his PhotoCat account. Friends and family could visit
his PhotoCat page periodically, see the latest photos, and track
his and Gina’s progress without having to wait for a phone
call. The photos were of a little lower quality than those he could
take with his digital camera, but the sharing features made the
tradeoff worth it.
A few
days after Steve and Gina returned home, they logged into their
PhotoCat account to revisit the trip highlights. Using the metadata-based
filtering system, they could easily view just the photos taken in
the southwestern United States as well as subsets from the particular
towns and national parks where they stopped. (The phone had automatically
added GPS and Cell ID metadata at the time of capture and was able
to match the coordinates to a remote database of geographic locations.)
Some of their favorite photos were of a funky rundown auto shop
where their Ford Focus was towed after the radiator blew along Route
66 west of Albuquerque. Gina snapped the photos with the camera
phone while Steve talked to the mechanic. A print of one of the
photos hangs in the living room of their apartment. After they got
back from their trip, they sorted through all the photos and picked
out the best 50 or so to caption and post as a custom gallery on
the PhotoCat site for friends and family to view.
View
Steve Steep's Persona
TOP
Darla
Garcia (First Day of School)
A
few months ago, Darla enrolled her son, Mario, in a new and exciting
half-day program called “Play School”. Play School is
a day care program that is designed to help children learn how to
play with other kids in a fun and stimulating learning environment.
Darla is happy that Mario will have the opportunity to interact
with other kids his own age, but is sad because this will be the
first time she will be apart from him for more than an hour or two
since he was born.
Darla
and her Husband Carlos have planned to take Mario to his first day
of Play School together. They as parents think this will be a memorable
moment in their son’s life and do not want to miss out on
the experience.
The
morning arrives; Darla gets up early to make sure everything runs
smoothly so Mario will be on time for his first day of Play School.
Everything runs without a hitch, she even makes Mario his favorite
breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham. As Carlos eats breakfast with
Mario, Darla grabs her camera phone “smile boys”. Darla
looks at the photo happy that she could capture the moment.
After
breakfast Darla goes outside and pulls the Volvo out of the cramped
garage. She gets the car seat from Carlos’s Taurus and belts
in into her car. While Darla is outside, Carlos puts Mario’s
coat and shoes on and brings Mario outside. Darla takes the opportunity
to take a picture of Carlos and Mario on the front stoop of their
house “awhh you put on his red jacket” she says to Carlos.
Darla
sets her camera phone on the top of the car and starts to put Mario
into his car seat, all of a sudden she hears “click”
Carlos has snapped a picture of her and Mario. Darla is happy she
got into at least one of the pictures, and knows that if it is unbecoming
she will just erase it later.
The
family drives off heading to Berkeley and the Play School site.
When the arrive Darla takes a picture of the room as Mario runs
off to play. After dropping Mario off at Play School she drops Carlos
off at work.
When
Darla arrives home she decides she wants to look at the pictures
and send them off to her mom in New Hampshire. She logs into her
PhotoCat account and sees the four pictures taken that morning waiting
for her. “Oh that is awful, its one big blur”, she says
when she realizes that Carlos had not held his hand still while
taking a picture. After deleting the bad picture Darla selects the
remaining three pictures and labels the group as “Mario’s
first day at Play School”. She then shares the picture with
her mother and Mario’s aunt Juanita.
View
Darla Garcia's Persona
TOP
Sarah
Jones (Typical College Day)
It
is now the middle of the semester and Sarah is working with her
study group for her Psychology class to generate discussion questions
for class. During a break in studying, Sarah pulls out her phone,
and demonstrates it to Jason by taking a picture of him. She shows
him the picture on the phone, but offers to email it to him.
During
the day and on her way home Sarah takes some additional pictures:
a squirrel; a friend with her mouth full at lunch; the Campanile
in the rain; people with umbrellas. In all, she ends up taking 11
pictures before she gets home that night.
Her pictures
automatically upload to PhotoCat and she views the thumbnails when
she gets home. By default, PhotoCat sorts the pictures by time so
it’s easy for her to find the recent pictures she wants to
include. She creates her blog for the day and writes about Jason;
she knows her friends in Georgia will be interested to finally see
a picture of him since they’ve read about him in her previous
blogs. She inserts an image link for each thumbnail she likes from
the day into her blog. When she clicks a link near each thumbnail
in PhotoCat, it automatically copies the needed HTML code to the
clipboard ready for pasting into her blog.
Next, Sarah
makes sure Jason gets a few pictures in his email. She sees the
picture of him that she wants to share towards the top of the thumbnails
and she also shares a few of her more artistic pictures. She remembers
one picture she took of Alcatraz that she especially liked. She
searches for “Alcatraz” and finds a picture from her
trip there. It isn’t the exact picture she wants, but she
quickly spots the correct one since the thumbnail is only a few
lines below. After selecting the pictures to share, she enters Jason’s
email address and composes an email to him (on the PhotoCat site)
that will notify him of the photoss he can look at online. Now Jason
can follow a link automatically included in his email to view the
pictures she has shared.
She
decides to send some pictures to her family while she’s using
PhotoCat since she hasn’t been in touch with them for a few
days. She selects some recent pictures, enters the email address
and sends them a note with a link to the photos from PhotoCat. She
doesn’t include the picture of Jason since she’s not
sure what they would think of her crush. She isn’t worried,
though, since PhotoCat only shares the photos are selects doesn’t
allow browsing of other photos unless she intentionally shares them.
She finishes up for the day and logs out of PhotoCat.
View
Sarah Jones's Persona
TOP
Jake
Parker (Party at The Vid)
Tonight is just
like any other Thursday night at Sigma Sigma Lamda (or "SWILL"
as it's affectionately known amongst the brothers)--everyone has
finished their last class of the week and Friday, as always, will
be a relaxing day off. Thursday night, however, means good times
and Jake Parker is ready to blow off some steam with his frat brothers
after miring through another week of classes, readings, and Professor
Myers.
Everyone
is going to be at The Vid tonight for their customary two dollar
pitcher night. After getting a call from his friend in the Sigma
Mu house, Jake pockets his phone, throws on some flip flops and
walks down there with his buddies. After a couple of pitchers, Ronnie,
as always, is in rare form. He stands on the bar and begins his
George Bush impersonation.
"Oh, man,
this is priceless." Jake pulls out his camera phone and takes
a couple photos of Ronnie from different angles.
The night continues.
Jenny shows up with Amber, Morgan, and Sarah. As an excuse for a
friendly smile and some harmless flirting with Jenny, Jake flips
open his phone and tells the girls to smile. The link arms, raise
their glasses, and grin. Jake winks at Jenny and takes the shot.
The girls gather around his phone and giggle at their photo. "Hey,
I'll send you this one tomorrow," Jake tells Jenny. She smiles
and laughs. "Okay!"
By the end of
the night, the girls have left and the boys are left to their own
devious devices. Ronnie can't help but plot against Mike, who has
challenged his capabilities a little too strenuously. Mike has fallen
asleep at the corner table in the back of The Vid, head in his hands,
slouched on the table peacefully.
"Here,
man, let's get him!" Ronnie urges, and before Jake knows what's
happening, Ronnie gently places Mike's head in a bowl of pretzels,
balances an empty pitcher on his head, and carefully rests Mike's
hand in a ramekin of ketchup. Snickering, Jake clutches his sides,
barely able to control himself as he flips open his phone. He takes
countless pictures, snapping shots until he reaches the limit on
his phone. "This is great!" Jake laughs with his buddies.
"Priceless," they agree.
The next day,
Jake rolls out of bed around noon and, shaking the sleep off, pads
down to the communal computer in the frat living room. One by one,
he sends his camera phone pictures to his PhotoCat account. He then
logs in to PhotoCat and browses through his collection, pleased
to see that he took about 20 pictures last night, as well as 15
or so from various times in the last three weeks. As he browses,
Jake is pleased to see how many of his friends from last night are
listed along with each photo; while he doesn't know how it works
exactly, the bluetooth recognition in his phone has captured the
presence of others who were with him at The Vid last night and PhotoCat
has made use of that metadata.
When
Jake is looking for a particular photo, he likes to remember the
event he was at when he took the picture. He considers last night
as "Thursday at The Vid," which is a pretty standard institution
to him and his friends. Photocat's interface allows Jake to easily
find Mike's funniest photo: the location of the thumbnail image
on a map lets Jake know the photo comes from the block where The
Vid is located, and the date tells Jake that it was last night,
not last week when Mindy, his ex-girlfriend, was there. What's neat
about Photocat is that Jake can see how he consistently takes photos
every Thursday at The Vid. 'It's like a neat little group of shots,'
Jake thinks. 'And they're always right there on the map, on Thursdays.
I wonder how they do that?' But for now, Jake is really excited
to wake up Mike and show him how goofy he was last night. And for
that matter, Ronnie's dance on the bar was unforgettable.
"Hey,
guys, come here! You've got to see this!" Jake hollers to his
frat brothers. The group gathers around the computer to look at
Jake's pictures as he jokingly narrates the events of the night
before. Laughter ensues.
View
Jake Parker's Persona
TOP |