OurUserNeeds

Mustafa Monkainfon Patrick Asare

**Step 1: Expected Users and Initial List of Task**

UMD Events is an online tool that will help UMD students and other UMD members to post and locate events that occur throughout the campus. With a huge number of activities held every day by a variety of departments clubs and organizations, students and other participants to those events are usually informed through diverse channels ranging from emails, bulletin boards, to pamphlets, word of mouth etc. While those ways of communicating are effective in their own ways, we find them to be obsolete and not efficient enough to reach the perfect audience and attract a good amount of people. Therefore, the ideal situation will be to have a central point, where everybody from all curriculums will come and find out about events of their interest and more importantly, easily locate where those events will occur.

With these objectives in mind, we have identified our main users.
 * **Students:** Graduate and Undergraduate students, those interested in activities occurring throughout the campus, from job fairs, information sessions, or career advising to clubs or organizations events, or any other kind of gatherings.


 * **Faculty Staff:**Tons of emails are sent everyday by faculty members to students or to other staff concerning a wide variety of events and activities. For example, in the Computer Science department, students are kept informed about jobs posting through emails or bulletin boards, but the problem is few people check their emails daily and sometimes miss out on great opportunities, or may waste too much time going to the CS building every week to look at the bulletin board.


 * **UMD Clubs:**With hundreds of clubs on campus, it is a hassle for those different clubs to keep their members informed and update about interesting events, even though they already have a base membership, reaching more members is sometimes very difficult.


 * **Campus Organizations:**Despite the fact that many of those organizations, such as The University Career Center or the Student Entertainment Events, have their own websites, most students barely know of their existence or even what they really do. Plus, their website are cluttered with diverse information and it is really hard to navigate them and find your way without wasting an awful amount of time.

**Set of Tasks** __Frequent Tasks__
 * § Create an account
 * § Post events
 * § Browse events/Search events (Search box)
 * § Events descriptions
 * § Event reservation (RSVP)
 * § Event advertising
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ GPS location of events (Event Map)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Sharing events
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Purchase event tickets
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Event Recommendations for registered users
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Users interest for better recommendation
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Event Manager/Personal Calendar

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Infrequent But Still Important Tasks__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Rarer and Not Very Important__
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Feedback on past events
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Event photo posting
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Event status
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Page customization (by organizers)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">§ Mobilize event (For smartphone users)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Step 2: Tasks Validation** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Based on our discussions with potential end users we have discovered that a majority of our target user base will perform all/most of the task that we listed using our system. There was however a few task that we did not include in our initial list. The list has been updated to reflect these new tasks.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Users placed particular emphasis on the ease of posting events, the shortcuts for repeated users and the ability to browse or filter events based on certain criteria. Users also wanted the ability to rsvp for events, and to track how many people have already signed up for their event. They also wanted the ability to include a list of potential constraints to inform attendants of the dress code, etc.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Student organization groups informed us that they would like the ability to create a page with a specialized event calendar that only pertained to them. While an interesting and useful idea we believe it is out of the scope of our project.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Step 3: System Requirements**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Absolutely Must Include__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> i. A simple and easy to navigate layout, not cluttered with unnecessary information so that any user, regardless of his/her computer skills, can easily find his/her way.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> ii. A login button for users to get access to their accounts

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> iii. A map, where events will be located, so users can easily plan attendance in advance, by for instance, figure out walking time from one place to another.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> iv. The event planner or club/organization will want to give a descriptive title of a specific event.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> v.Users will want to have more description of the event, which they interested to.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> vi. Users will want to enter location of specific event or find out what interesting events are held in their specific area.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> vii. Users may want to know the date of the event, and what type of event it is (weekly, monthly, one time, etc.).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> viii. Many things can happen before the event, weather inclement or location change, so users want to be sure that they will not waste their time planning for an event that was cancelled, postponed or whose location has been changed.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> ix. Users could make reservations for events, and confirm attendance to events.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> x. Users could browse events or may be pick events according to specific interests.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> xi. For active users, an event manager or personal calendar can help them out organize their events according may be by order of importance.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> xii. For paying events, users may want to buy tickets for those events.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Should Include__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> i. Organizations, clubs and other users may want to advertise their events according to users’ interests.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> ii. Users may want to post photos, videos or other media about a past event to attract more people for future events.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> iii. Users could be able to receive events recommendations according to their specific interest or area of expertise.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__Could Include__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> i. For smart phone users, mobilize events can interest them so they can have their events on their phones while they are on the go.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> ii. For event planners, they might want to customize their page for their events.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">** Annotated References **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|Yelp] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-While not being a dedicated event posting website they do have an event section. Which allows a user to sort events by type, and location. The one thing that we really got from this site is the ability for users to post insights and review of events. User reviews will help new students to the university decide if that is an event or club that they would like to be a part of. It also has the ability to cause clubs that get lower rating to evaluate why they are getting these ratings and make the necessary changes.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|Event Planning] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-Link to an online version of a book titled **The Developmental psychology of planning: why, how, and when do we plan** By Sarah L. Friedman. Using this book we plan to gain insight into the mentality behind planning of events so that we can make the process as intuitive as possible.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|Event Engine] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-This site is an event posting site only for sports. In future iterations of our product we hope to be able to produced specialized event engines that link to our main site for all of the school teams. This site also allows users to register for upcoming events and see the requirements. Which is something we would also like to integrate into our product.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|Eventida] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">-The one thing that we really like about this site is the one click event posting. Even if you are not a registered user you are still able to create events simply and without registering. We believe that allowing people to post events without registering will facilitate ease of use and will lead to faster adoption of our site.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">[|Eventbrite] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-A rough model of what we hope to achieve with our site, with a few key differences. Firstly they are a global site while we plan to remain local to the university. Secondly they place emphasis on events that require tickets, whereas most of the campus events will be free.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">[|Kojami] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-A more complicated version of the site we would like to implement. This website has a lot of ideas that make event posting more intuitive and easy to use. The focus on ease of use and accessibility is what really appealed to me.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Stars.umd.edu <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-Currently the only way for a student to know what a student organization has planned is to go to this website, search for the organization, and then contact them. We plan to simplify this process by allowing students to view of the events for any organization that they desire in one place.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">[|Zvents] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">-Not only do they allow posting of events, but they also host an event search engine which allows people to easily filter through the events the want. We hope to accomplish this same task or something similar to it with our system.