Task
Analysis and Interface Sketches
ORWELL: Online Report Writing
for Elementary-Level Learners
Hung Phan -- UI Design
Jeffrey Fong -- Graphics, Usability
Testing
Paul Chang -- Software
Ron Yeh -- Documentation, User Relations
[Click here for the Microsoft
Word version of this document]
Topic Outline
I. Problem and Solution Overview
[top of document]
Teachers assign students reports, ranging in topic from Christopher
Columbus to Emperor Penguins. However, once a student receives the
task, he or she may not know where to begin. Researching and organizing
information into a coherent written or oral report is difficult, and may
even be new to the student. Nowadays, many students opt for the Internet
(instead of the library) as their primary source of research. The
problem is that these children may not know where to start looking for
information. After wading through many results returned by search
engines, students must still organize and deliver their report. ORWELL
is a web-based tool that aids students in researching, keeping track of,
and organizing information. With ORWELL, students can avoid many
of the frustrations associated with reports, and concentrate on the most
important part—the oral or written delivery of the report.
II. Interview
Description and Results [top of document]
[Click here for full-detail interview
notes]
Since our software targets 4th through 6th grade students, we selected
one user from each class (one boy, two girls) for this paper. For
a better perspective, we also interviewed one other 5th grade student,
a 10th grade student, and a 6th grade teacher [See
full-detail interview notes]. The three main interviews are summarized
below:
Interview 1
Candice Chan is ten years old, in the sixth grade, and is enrolled
in her district’s GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program. Candice
claims to have had much experience writing reports, and recalls topics
such as Native Americans, Colonial Times, Explorers, and Biomes.
She uses Microsoft Word to complete her assignments, and Internet Explorer
to research topics on the Internet. She seems comfortable with Word,
but remarked that many of her friends are still confused with it.
She surfs the web occasionally.
How she currently solves the problem:
When assigned a report, Candice logs onto the Internet to do her research.
Occasionally, she also goes to the library. But on the Internet,
she uses www.yahoo.com as her primary search engine. After filtering
the search results, she writes down relevant URLs on paper (she was not
familiar with the concept of URL bookmarking). She recalled one instance
when she accidentally threw away the slip of paper she had been using and
therefore had to restart her Internet research. After finding enough
relevant web sites, typically two to three, she starts writing her report.
She returns to her saved URLs whenever she feels that she needs some facts.
Interview 2
Maria Ly is nine years old and in the fourth grade. She goes
to an all-Asian Christian School.
Maria has written school reports on topics such as “Insects”, and “My
Best Friend.” She writes a report about once every two weeks.
Her reports are usually one page long, and at maximum two pages long.
She is used to writing five or more drafts before she has to turn in a
final one. Drafts may be hand-written, whereas the final copy must
be typed. When she types her reports, she asks her father to review
it once before she prints it out.
How she currently solves the problem:
When Maria is assigned an informative report (what she calls a “fact
report”), she first goes to the library to look through books. She
then looks on the Internet. She is not familiar with any search engine
but MSN, because she types search words into her Internet Explorer search
bar (the address bar doubles as the search bar). She currently filters
search results by visiting the site, looking through it, and printing it
if it is relevant. If she likes an image on a website, she will drag
it to MS Word and include it into her document.
Interview 3
Christopher Luk is eleven years old, and in the fifth grade. Christopher
writes reports several times a year. The length of his reports are
usually about 500 words. He uses MS Word to type out most homework
assignments. He also surfs the Internet ocassionally for leisure
and for education.
How he currently solves the problem:
When he needs to do research, he uses the Internet almost exclusively.
He mentioned that he does not like to go to libraries, because it is difficult
to find books about what he wants. His search engine of choice is
www.yahoo.com. The one advantage he sees about the Internet is that
if you do find something, you find a lot of it. But the disadvantage
is based on the same principle: sometimes you get too much of what you
don't want. To keep track of information on the web, he selects the
web page, and pastes it into MS Word. He also saves pictures from
the Internet via the right-click Save As…function. He rarely uses
bookmarks. Before he begins to write his report, he will print out
relevant sites and read through them.
Tasks and Themes Interviewees Shared
Web Browsing -- Children seem to be familiar with the Internet, and
web browsers in general.
The Internet vs. the Library -- Students who have used the Internet
prefer the Internet over the library as their primary source of information.
No Bookmarks -- None of the users actively used bookmarks as a tool
to save the location of sites.
Yahoo! -- It seems that Yahoo! has been accepted as the search engine
of choice among young students.
Microsoft Word -- Likewise, MS Word is the word processor of choice.
Most kids responded that they felt “comfortable” with Word.
III. Task Analysis Questions
[top of document]
1. Who is going to use the system?
-
Targets students who are in the 4th-6th grades.
-
Students that need help in searching for, keeping track of, and organizing
information (for writing an informative report).
-
Students range from those having little exposure to a fair amount of exposure
to the Internet.
2. What tasks do they now perform?
-
Targeted users log on to the Internet (and/or go to the library) to search
for information relevant to their report. After reading through potential
sources, they copy facts, and order them into a crude outline. Finally,
users type out the report (1-4 pages), and print it out.
3. What tasks are desired?
-
User logs onto the Internet, goes to a search engine, and searches for
a subject (e.g. penguin).
-
User manually filters the search results to find relevant web sites on
the subject.
-
User bookmarks these URLs for future reference.
-
User skims through each of the documents, copying and pasting relevant
text or images into their word processor.
-
User then organizes this information into an outline.
-
Finally, he or she writes the report, using the saved notes as a reference.
4. How are the tasks learned?
-
On-screen icons and text guide the user in a step-by-step fashion.
Thus, they learn by doing. Also, there will be help on all windows,
informing students of what the software is doing.
5. Where are the tasks performed?
-
The tasks are performed at home or at school, wherever there is access
to the web page.
6. What’s the relationship between user & data?
-
Data (the current report) is saved online, in the user’s account, and may
be downloaded to the user’s local computer.
7. What other tools does the user have?
-
They may use paper and pencil to take notes. Users also have library
books, which provide more detail to the information found on the Internet.
Users may use television or radio as another source of information.
Also, they might ask parents, siblings, and teachers for help.
8. How do users communicate with each other?
-
Users do not need to communicate with each other. If they choose
to share information on the report, they may use email to send the report
file.
9. How often are the tasks performed?
-
The user may write up to several reports per academic semester.
-
Frequency of tasks vary from once every several weeks to once per semester.
10. What are the time constraints on the tasks?
-
The time constraints on the tasks depend on the length of time the user
is allowed on any one report (weeks to months). Individual tasks
occur within a reasonable time constraint (eg. bookmarking a webpage should
occur almost immediately).
11. What happens when things go wrong?
-
Mishaps, such as loss of data, are prevented by means of undo, or saving
backup versions. Internet sources will be cached locally to prevent
data loss caused by a broken connection.
IV. Description
and Analysis of Sample Tasks [top
of document]
Easy
-
Susie, a 5th grader, is assigned to write an informative report.
She picks the topic of Emperor Penguins. So now she wants to search
for web pages about the life of Emperor Penguins for starting her report.
-
After visiting a couple of web pages, she decides that a certain page will
be useful in her research. She bookmarks it so she can find it more
easily in the future.
Moderate
-
Susie has already started a report and has a stack of notecards from which
she wants to find one that contains text about penguins eating “krill.”
-
Susie finds some relevant text on a web page and wants to save the text
to a notecard so that she can use it for her report later.
Difficult
-
So, now Susie has many notecards with different topics. Separately,
it is too much to handle, so she wants to group the notecards under separate
topic groups.
-
Susie has a rough idea of the organization of her report and the many notecards
corresponding to the information she has gathered. She wants to organize
the groups of notecards she has under a rough topic outline.
Other tasks
-
Susie finds an image that will be interesting to use in her report.
She wants to save it so that she can later put it in her report.
(easy)
-
Susie finds that the web pages returned by the search engine are not specific
enough to find good information. She wants to refine the search.
(moderate)
V. Interface Design
[top of document]
The scenarios are outlined below. [Click
here to see all the screens at once]
Easy Task
Susie searches for web pages about the life of Emperor Penguins for
starting her report.
1. She logs in to ORWELL by typing in her name, password, and clicking
START.
2. She selects ‘Start a New Report’.
3. She names the report “Emperor Penguins” by typing into the text-field.
4. She clicks Go To Search.
