Scenarios and Task Analysis
Posted on 27 Sep, 2011
The task analysis we preformed follows a flow diagram model. The high level tasks are represented in yellow and give a high level overview of the apartment hunting process. We decided to dive down into the "Search for Apartment" section, since that is the main focus of our project, and generated a more specific flow diagram showing the different ways in which a user could go about renting or finding and apartment. For each of the sub-tasks we gave specific example of things the users we interviewed took advantage of while they were preforming the same process. By performing this we were able to isolate the very problematic sections and help focus our ideation to areas which were more fruitful than others.
This scenario touches on the idea of exploration in the apartment searching process. In this scenario a user just received a job in a city they are not familiar with. They go online and use one of the various apartment finding tools to get a feel for what options there are and what the city is like. Afterwords they leave with more information than when they began but do not feel that they have a strong idea about what they are getting into.
This scenario focuses on the shopping portion of the apartment finding experience. In this scenario the user employs one of the existing apartment finding tools to sort through an abundance of listings and assemble a list of potential apartments. They then proceeded to contact all the prospective landlords using the email alias supplied by the apartment searching service. The user has no idea when and who will get back to them and feels lost in the process.
This scenario focuses on the management aspect of finding an apartment. Here the user has contacted a list of potential landlords and has received a large number of replies. The user must sort through all the replies and categorize each prospective apartment, ask additional questions, and set up visits. The user again is overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of information and processes to manage and is stressed out with the process.