Deep Diver and the Info Tourist
One of the ‘optional requirements’ we need to address is that of our audience definition, something that I've been struggling with since the beginning of thesis. The audience for my thesis product always seemed so broad and vaguely general that it seemed not worth addressing. After all, I wasn't planning on only designing for white males in their 50s with income over $150K. As a nod to my service design project last semester, I decided to focus more on user goals and motivations; psychographics rather than demographics. To do that, I backed up a bit and created a concept map around the core areas of my thesis project: design, technology and geography.
After thinking about the technology required for my project, it became clearer to me the different motivations, needs and technological literacy that various people using this would possess. By technological literacy, I refer not so much to rote skills but to the understanding and critical thinking of the deeper implications of using technology. A generation ago, being able to use a word processor or create charts in a spreadsheet application fulfilled this definition. With computers today being ubiquitous, user-friendly and interconnected by default, just knowing how to use technology isn't enough—one must know how to use it wisely. This kind of literacy centers on understanding the legal or ethical uses of technology and its consequences (e.g.: posting photos of yourself drunk and vomiting on Facebook for potential employers to see).
Obviously, geography is the content of my thesis. My experience with learning geography in school amounted to memorizing state capitals for memorization's sake. No wonder people grow up uninterested in geography and cannot see all of the aspects and disciplines within it. Geography helps teach and visually convey such concepts as patterns, distribution, correlation and juxtaposition—all useful for analyzing data and finding answers (or developing hypotheses) for a variety of subjects. For this reason, I imagine that one possible adaptation could be for educational purposes (‘the budding scholar’ as I'm labeling those beginning users).
Valuable in my research are the learning theories of the educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. His categorizations of low to high-order thinking skills became a helpful framework to determine various users’ goals and their interactions with my thesis project. While some people would no doubt be passive information consumers (‘the info-tourist’), I'm interested in targeting those who have a deep interest in learning by analyzing data, evaluating it and hopefully creating and collaborating with others, thereby adding to the world's organization of knowledge (‘the deep diver’ and ‘the professional researcher’).
After identifying the basic users, their motivations, technological literacy and goals became more apparent. Assessing their current tools used for informational searches was derived in part from analyzing the results to my recent survey. From all of this, I could compile a list of basic actions needed to fulfill their goals and organize all of this data into a spreadsheet. In turn, hopefully this will inform the functions I want my final prototype to have, or at least the ones required for a minimum viable product.
Finally, using a method often associated with agile development, I developed a few user stories. As a way to describe these people, their goals and actions, the user story is a concise statement written from the user's point-of-view:
“As a [user type], I want to [some action] so that [some benefit].”
This format in not unlike the one I found extremely helpful in clarifying my thesis statement of purpose. With that in mind, a few user stories of my own to conclude with…
As a junior high school student, I want to learn geography so that I can understand other subjects better.
As an armchair historian, I want to quickly find out about some topical story during my commute so that I can engage in intelligent conversations with friends and co-workers.
As an aspiring scholar, I want to gain in-depth knowledge about a particular subject or place so that I can satisfy my curiosity.
As a professional reporter, I want to effectively research, analyze and correlate data through a geo-spatial lens so that I can write a lengthy article for my employer.
As a member of academia, I want to be able to visualize a series of variables in a specific place and time so that I can contribute original knowledge to the world.
