Interaction and Usability: Brit Drive System Interface - Research Paper Example

An interview with the owner, Timothy Goode, made it possible to gain a basic understanding of the existing system, its primary and secondary users, and its environment (See Appendix A.1 for the interview). The questions revolved around the users and their roles in the Brit Drive system. Document Analysis The company’s data is paper-based and resides with Timothy. With Timothy’s permission, it became possible to analyze the data that is stored in the existing Brit Drive system (See Appendix section A.

2 for the analysis). Observation By spending a day at the school, first-hand observation of the Brit Drive’s environment and daily operations became possible (See Appendix section A.3 for the findings). Questionnaires: To analyze the computer skill level, problems, and requirements of the receptionists, instructors, and the pupils, a questionnaire was formulated. Each questionnaire had open and closed questions. (See the questionnaire and findings summary in Appendix A.4). 2.2 Secondary Research Based on the facts collected in the primary research, the main users that will directly interact with the system are the owner and the receptionists.

The instructor and the pupil are the secondary users of the system (Wang n.d.). The main users fall into the category of novice (Helander et al. 1997) as they are general computer users. And since the system is to shift from legacy to digital, the users would have no syntactic and limited semantic knowledge of the overall application. In such cases, a simply designed interface is the only option. Since, all the tasks the receptionists perform can also be performed by the owner, easily memorized shortcuts can be used as a standard for a task.

Once the users become frequent users, these shortcuts will not only ease the system learning process but will also help during the rush hours. 3. User Needs Analysis 3.1 Persona According to the common traits, the system has four user categories which lead to four personas; the owner, receptionist, instructor, and the pupil (Wang n.d.). The persona skeletons from the previous section are then prioritized according to their importance to the system (Wang n.d.).