- 1 - Jun Mak – Facilitator & User’s Interface Design Sean Lee – User’s Interface & Features Design Bikas Tomkoria – Interviewer & Conceptual Design Fahd Elbolichikhi – Scenario & Task Design http://ratbert.bmrc.berkeley.edu/courseware/cs160/fall01/Projects/Group4/ Project Analysis for GROUP 4 Project Title: ETA - Electronic Travel Assistance (Windows CE / PocketPC) The Overview The Internet has become a common resource for the budget-minded college student and young adult travelers. These resources present information to the traveler, but do not tailor that information to the specific interests of the traveler, nor do they provide the means that allow the traveler to stay within budget constraints. In other words, conventional resources provide information to the traveler, but do not provide a means for the traveler to manage that information. On the other hand, tour books provide an overwhelming amount of information that is not always tailored to the specific interests of the traveler, and this information is sometimes outdated. The goal of our project is to improve the experience of budget travelers visiting new cities by providing to users access to the type of information that is found in budget travel resources, such as dining, entertainments, accommodation, and public transportation information, but also provide tools for the user to efficiently manage those resources. Our Contextual Inquiry Three people were chosen for the contextual inquiry for the Electronic Travel Assistant tool. The three chosen represented the target group of users, namely budget travelers. In order to find people in the context of their "work," we needed to find people on vacation as budget travelers. Therefore, we went to San Francisco to a youth hostel (the Hostelling International youth hostel at 312 Mason Street, San Francisco) to interview budget travelers in their role of visiting a new city and trying to find their way around. Three young men and women were chosen, Jack (from London, England, aged 20), Hannah (from Leeds, England, aged 20), and Monica (from Australia, aged 21). They gave us feedback on the resources they use to plan and manage their trips. All three of them used a tour book, namely a Let's Go guidebook or Lonely Planet guidebook as their primary resource, with limited use of the Internet, primarily for email purposes. One aspect they held in common was that they carried the guidebook with them as they toured the city, as opposed to leaving it in their living quarters. They also talked about the information they use most frequently from the guidebook. When touring a city, all three most frequently referenced the maps of the city, and all three felt that this was the most important information provided by the guidebooks. Jack commented that he was frustrated. The listings and locations provided in the guidebooks were not always shown on the maps. He also would like some sort of distance information on how far away places are. In addition, they all relied heavily on the listing for accommodations, as finding a place to sleep was the primary concern upon arrival into a new city. Upon arrival, the travelers first oriented themselves and found living accommodations before exploring sites, restaurants, or entertainment. Another feeling shared the interviewees was that the guidebooks were frequently inaccurate and/or not up to date. They were frustrated by the lack of pricing information, and by the one sided point of view of only the authors of the book, especially regarding descriptions of nightclubs and bars. They rarely used the guidebooks as a resource for nightlife because it did not give enough insight into what actually is "cool," or what is popular in the local scene. Jack commented that, "you can tell that the authors were from Harvard, and they don't seem to be the type of people who go out to the places they list." Word of mouth was the most common resource they used for finding fun and popular places to spend the evenings. Jack and Hannah, who are 20 years old, expressed frustration of being under the drinking age, as it limits the places they could visit. None of the travelers used the SF Bay Guardian as a resource, a popular free newspaper among locals of culture and activities in San Francisco. Only Jack had ever heard of the paper. In addition, they all felt the shopping sections of the guidebooks were the least important to them. Finally, all three of them managed their budgets by- 2 - simply taking out their money in blocks representing a period of time, but they did little else to manage their spending. They did, however, expresses frustrations on the difficulty of staying within budget. Each of the three travelers provided additional insight into different things they personally found to be useful. Jack commented on how he likes the cultural segments provided in the guidebooks that tell a little about local societies. He also mentioned that he would like some brief local news information. Hannah, on the other hand, had needed to visit a doctor at a previous time during her trip. She expressed the usefulness of the hospital and emergency information provided in the guidebooks, and that even though it was not something she used very often, it was something that came in handy in the rare case when she needed it. She also commented that it would be useful to have information on what to do in case of an emergency, on what actions to take, especially if it is a health care problem. Monica brought up that she liked the reviews and hyperlinking model used by Amazon.com to give information about music. Amazon.com gives user ratings on music as well as links to records by similar artists. Our Task Analysis Questions Our system will be used primarily by budget travelers; we anticipate the typical profile of our user to be a college student or a young person who is traveling on a budget. The typical user has the general skills to use a PDA and will be able to use our system intuitively without any extensive training. Our system could later be expanded to a broader population of users, we chose to initially focus on the budget traveler. We have identified a group of tasks that are performed by travelers. The most important task is looking up and booking accommodations. Currently, travelers spend a considerable amount of time flipping through pages of hotel and hostel listings in travel guides. They call by phone
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