Maryland+Matters+-+User+Needs


 * __Maryland Matters __**

Tammy Tran (ttran125@umd.edu) Ian King (iking@terpmail.umd.edu) Taylor Lovett (admin@taylorlovett.com) Rahul Monga (rahulm5000@gmail.com)


 * User needs: Tasks, scenarios, and references **

There are many techniques used to gather public information but technology has greatly improved these data collection methods. Online surveys have become one of the most convenient and useful means of gathering customer feedback. Free online survey software, such as //SurveyMonkey, ClickSurvey, e-Questionnaire, MobileSurvey, SmartSurveys, Web-Based Survey, ZipSurvey, Websurveyor//, etc., allows any business, organization, or individual to create and disperse personalized surveys via the World-Wide-Web. Web-based data collection methods are known to provide several advantages in terms of eliminating cost and certain limitations, increasing response rate, and decreasing response time. For one, online surveys can significantly save on transaction costs (i.e. time, labor, etc.) [7], production costs (i.e. printing and distributing survey supplies) [2, 7], and processing costs (i.e. labor hours and cost to compile and edit data results) [2, 7, 8]. Eliminating the manual data-entry phase of survey results saves labor time and eliminates possible entry errors thus improving quality control over results [7, 8]. Online surveys also eliminate geographical limitations, thus “expanding the pool of respondents (larger sampling)” [5, 6, 7]. Furthermore, the use of electronic survey software allows for instant delivery [5], a higher response rate due to increased access to a wider audience [3, 5], shorter response time usually within “hours or a few days (at most) relative to several weeks for other types of traditional methods” [5], and immediate feedback [5, 7]. The major disadvantages to traditional techniques include: “poor response rates, slow response, and manual transcription of data from a hard copy questionnaire to an appropriate statistical analysis tool” [5, 7]. In general, “web-based survey produces results that are better, faster, and cheaper.” [7]. Unfortunately, many of the free software comes with commercial limitations. For example, //SuveryMonkey.com// will only allow their customers to create a survey with up to 10 questions and 100 responses for their basic, free version.

Not only has technology made producing and distributing surveys much more accurate and efficient, web-based surveys are much more convenient for potential survey respondents to participate in surveys. Survey respondents prefer a Web questionnaire to a paper questionnaire [8]. Studies have shown that electronic survey participants are more likely to “respond to open-ended questions [more extensively] and to add comments to questions… they write more comments and their responses are more insightful.” [1]. There is evidence that online survey participants tend to respond more honestly in their opinions and experience and more critically and personally about sensitive topics than compared to other means data collection; note, especially with college students [4]. On another note, response rate is usually related to survey sponsors and topic. “Generally, surveys sponsored by academic and governmental agencies have higher response rates than those sponsored by commercial one” [2]. Topic interest is also one of the most important factors that influence response rates. “When the topic is with high salience (i.e., the topic is of high interests to some surveyees), potential respondents are more likely to respond to the survey” [2]. In general, “the likelihood of participation can be greatly enhanced if the topic of the survey is consistent with respondents’ beliefs, attitudes or values” [6].

With over 100 academic departments, 100 facilities and 500 clubs and organizations offered at the University of Maryland College Park, student feedback is crucial to the applicability of the existence of such services. Student feedback can help these departments, facilities and organizations make student-related decisions such as: determining appropriate spending budgets, creating new or eliminating useless services, etc. Each department, facility, or organization has their own means of gathering student feedback; whether it is dispersing paper/handheld surveys on campus, sending out emails, using alternatively collected data (i.e. grades or student profiles), etc. Current university means of gathering student feedback can be very cost effective, inaccurate and in return, produce very lower response rates. Generally, younger individuals, especially college students, are more comfortable and responsive to participating in Internet research. In addition, as mentioned before, college students are especially more likely to participate in a general survey if the topic is of high //salience//. By combining the convenience of web-based surveys with topics related to University of Maryland College Park, researchers may then be able to effectively and efficiently gather more student feedback. Furthermore, social networking has become such a big phenomenon; college students are especially fascinated in their peers interests, therefore, such students might be more appealed to the idea of survey participation in exchange for survey feedback (i.e. seeing survey results generated by participation of their peers).

[1] Coderre, Francois, and Anne Mathieu. "Comparison of the quality of qualitative data obtained through telephone, postal and email surveys."International Journal of Market Research. 46.3 (2004): 347-357. Print.
 * References **

[2] Fan, Weimiao, and Zheng Yan. "Factors affecting response rates of the web survey: A systematic review." Computers in Human Behavior. 26. (2010): 132-139. Web. 1 Oct. 2011. .

[3] Grant, David B., Christoph Teller, and Wolfgang Teller. International Journal of Market Research. 47.6 (2005): 641-666. Print.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[4] Hines, Denise A., Emily M. Douglas, and Sehar Mahmood. "The effects of survey administration on disclosure rates to sensitive items among men: A comparison of an internet panel sample with a RDD telephone sample." Computers in Human Behavior. 26. (2010): 1327-1335. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. <www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh>.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[5] Ilieva, Janet, Steve Baron, and Nigel M. Healey. "Online surveys in marketing research: pros and cons." International Journal of Market Research. 44.3 (2002): 361-376. Print.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[6] Jin, Liyin. "Improving response rates in web surveys with default setting." International Journal of Market Research. 53.1 (2011): 75-94. Print.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[7] Theuri, Peter M., and Leslie D. Turner. "Conducting Survey Research Through an Enhanced Online Web Survey Procedure."Journal of Internet Commerce. 1.4 (2002): 37-53. Print.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">[8] Vehovar, Vasja, Katja Lozar Mangreda, and Zenel Batagelj. "Sensitivity of Electronic Commerce Measurement to the Survey Instrument." International Journal of Electronic Commerce. 6.1 (2001): 31-51. Print.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">From the above descriptions of online survey software users, online survey participants, university facilities’ need for student feedback and university student survey participants, the following list was generated of all possible related tasks for such users:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Proposed Tasks **
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ability to create online surveys
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ability to vote/participate in online surveys
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ability to manage/keep track of one’s activities on system
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Manage one’s surveys
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Organize/display survey results in graphs
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">See most popular/participated survey
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">See most recent/newest surveys
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Be able to search for surveys
 * <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Add/respond to comments to a survey
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Have a “watch list” of surveys one would like to track
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Be able to access system via smartphone app
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create personal profiles
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">See profiles of survey participants
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Join networks (organized into areas, universities, etc.)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create posts for ideas that an individual supports/oppose (~Twitter)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Participants can support/oppose an individual’s idea (similar to Facebook’s like/dislike feature)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">See most supported ideas
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">See what other participants/your friends support or oppose via their profiles
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Create forum-like section for general questions (~Piazza)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Control whether forums visible in specific networks or publicly
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Allow ranking of forum answers (like Yahoo Answers)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Note: <span style="color: red; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">* <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">denotes the most frequent and important tasks

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Given the above list of tasks, ideally the Maryland Matters system can consist of three components: 1) a survey component that will allow system users to create, manage, vote and view survey results; 2) a profiles component that will allow the system to expand system functionality to allow system users to view other participants activities; 3) a forum component that will allow system users to post general questions to seek open-ended answers from other system users. //

Part 2: Validating the tasks
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In step 1 we proposed a list of seven most frequently used tasks for people who use //Maryland Matters://

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">1) __Ability to create online surveys__ – Obviously, a site that is supposed to compile information about the University of Maryland will need to have a way to post new questions about the University. Each user will have the ability to create a new survey that other students can vote or comment on.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">2) __Ability to search for surveys__ – Each survey should be indexed so that new users can easily search the database for surveys on a particular topic. By adding this feature people will be able to tell if their question has already been asked or get general information about a topic.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">3) __Ability to vote or participate in surveys__ – When a new question is asked to the community, other students can vote for the question, indicating that they think it is an important question. When students vote for a question, the system can organize search results based on the number of people who voted for that question.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">4) __Ability to add/respond to comments on a survey__ – Sometimes people would like to answer your question or ask follow up questions about your surveys.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">5) __Ability to manage/keep track of one’s activities on the system__ – When people use the system they would like to be able to monitor what questions they have posted, the answers they have received, and what questions they have voted on. Users should be able to easily access this information and edit certain settings about individual actions, like changing their votes or deleting questions and comments that they have posted.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">6) __Manage one’s surveys__ – Since surveys are the main focus of the project, people should be able to really manage their surveys. They should be able to access all surveys or change the settings on just one survey. They should also be able to remove certain surveys if they choose to do so.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">7) __Organize/display survey results in graphs__ – Tracking how other people have been participating in your survey over time could be useful information. For instance, you post a question and there were no initial responses. Then a few months later, campus administration changes something and suddenly your post receives an enormous amount of responses. People who are browsing over your question might like to know that your question is somehow very relevant to a particular event, which would be easy to see if your survey results are displayed in a graph.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">In addition to the comments we received on the tasks listed above, one other idea was proposed for us to try to implement:

__ Ability to publish results __ -- Several potential users mentioned that they occasionally have to create surveys for classes and have to publish their results in papers or grant access to their professors. The users mentioned that they might like to be able to save the results of a survey to an area where their professor can easily access them. Or, they would like to have a way for a professor to create a "Professor's Profile" where students can save results from certain surveys into the professor's "Drop Box". By adding this component, the professor would be able to easily track and monitor the surveys of all of his/her students and they would be able to view the results with relative ease.

Part 3: Key Users and List of Requirements

 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">List of Requirements : **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">__Highest Priority Requirements__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Registration system that allows for user authentication <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Creation of survey or poll <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Edit of survey or poll <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Deletion of survey or poll <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Page that shows statistics of survey or poll <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Voting mechanism for each survey or poll <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Index and search of surveys (by title, tags, authors etc) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Implement a comment system for each survey <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Page to show current user activity

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">__Medium Priority Requirements__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Data structures to add, delete, edit favorite surveys <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Implement interface to display surveys sorted in order (by date, topic, etc) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Keep track and displays "hottest" surveys (ones that have the most activity, response, comments, etc) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Creation of personal user profiles. Should display information like name, contact information, interests, etc <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Keep track of survey participants and their profiles <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Create network structure that users can join (like university clubs, majors, areas on campus, etc)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">__Low Priority Requirements__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Smart phone (iOS, Android) access <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Forum section for general question/ answer topics <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Have system to allow users to post on their own profiles (like the wall on Facebook) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> - Allow users to rate users post's ( Facebook's like/dislike functionality) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">- Display most trending posts


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Key users: **

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Undergraduate student __

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">We predict the most common user for this system would be a full time undergraduate student on campus. This kind of user would be most interested in topics like seeing which classes are trending, comparisons of professors, things and activities to do on campus, popular UMD eats, and College park night life. The system will make it easy for these types of users to pose questions to their peers and see the opinions of many other students.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Graduate student __

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This system can also be very beneficial for graduate students as well. It is common for many upper level curriculums to poll wide audiences to gather data and statistics. This system will allow these grad students to access the student body of Maryland and their opinions without much work.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Professors/Instructors __

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Professors and instructors occasionally like to ask their class questions for many sorts of reasons. Things like feedback on homework assignments, discussions on a topic in class, exam review questions are all things that a professor could use this survey/poll system for. This would allow the professor to easily get access to their students, and how they view the course.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Researchers __

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">A researcher is very similar to the graduate student user. There are also sometimes in need of a sample population to ask questions, receive response, and to make statistical analysis on that information. If research is being done on campus and it requires some sort of student or faculty input, this system could be used to attain that information.