Viewing Groups Scenarios

Scenarios for Design

The following tasks are a small subset of those that will eventually be supported in Sakai 3. They are meant to drive the initial design work in this area representing a broad spectrum of common activities.

Viewing / notifying

View-1
Goal: Know what groups I am a member of
Task: See my groups
Who: All

Scenario: Overview of communities and commitments
Christy wants to view all her groups/communities to determine if she can join one more professional organization. She goes to the "dashboard" for her communities where she can see all the communities she is a member of along with some basic information (what basic info is needed?). Since she wants to get a sense whether or not she can squeeze in another one, she goes to the calendar view for all her communities and sees at a glance when she has time commitments for all of her communities. Christy wants to participate in everything and often over-commits. She needs to remind herself how busy she is in general so she wants to see all her activities, assignments, plans, etc. on the calendar.

Activity Diagram

Conceptual wireframe

Task Conceptual Models

Task: V1 - See my groups
Persona: Christy Gonzola (Undergraduate Student - Molecular & Cell Biology)

Task	Should I join a new professional organization?	View all communities I belong to	View calendar of all activities related to my communities	Add course schedules and assignments to calendar along with any other commitments I have like job interviews, yoga, etc.
Scenario	Christy wants to view all her groups/communities to determine if she can join one more professional organization.	Christy goes to the "dashboard" for her communities and she can see all the communities she is a member of along with some basic information (what basic info is needed?)	Since she wants to get a sense whether or not she can squeeze in another one, she goes to the calendar view for all her communities and see at a glance when she has time commitments for all of her communities.	Christy wants to participate in everything and often over-commits. She needs to remind herself how busy she is in general so she wants to see all her activities, assignments, plans, etc. on the calendar.
Considerations / Influencers	How many communities do I belong to? Do I have time to join another? Is there overlap in this new community with any of my other communities?	Which communities does this include? What about communities I participate in but am not officially a member? How important are each of these communities?	Do I (will I) actually attend all of these events? Which communities and events are most important? Which are high priority and which are lower priority?	How busy am I really? How much of my "empty" time is really taken up with studying? How much down time do I need?
Pain-points	In this case, Christy already knows about the organization she's thinking of joining but if she didn't there is not an easy way to find organizations you might want to be part of. The current Membership tool is just a long list alphabetically with all different kinds of organizations mixed in together. There is no way to search.	Currently I have to go to many different places to see all my communities - both within the system and outside. Even for those available within Sakai my various communities are only accessed via a site and the sites are hard to find and access in tabs and the long dropdown. There's no way to search for a particular community.	No shared calendar. She can use google calendar to keep track of all her stuff but she has to manually move events from a disparate Sakai calendar into her google calendar. Maintenance of all her calendars is a nightmare.	All this information can be overwhelming in a calendar. Currently there is no way to easily see more details in the context of the calendar (ex. click on an event in the calendar for more details)
Experience	Christy should easily be able find organizations relevant to her interests - both through searching and browsing. She should be able to learn more about the organization once she finds it.	Christy needs an at-a-glance view of all her communities with details available if she wants them. She should be able to organize and perhaps categorize them however makes sense to her.	Christy should be able to easily see which activities belong to which communities (think google calendar & ical color coding). The calendar should have an at a glance view of all the activities with an ability to see details. She should be able to choose what kind of a view she wants (day, week, month).	The additional activities display and are also somehow coded so she can see what community they are related to. She would like to be able to add some sort of priority code to calendar items.
Improvements		Should be a way to tell the difference between the types of communities (e.g. classes vs SIG vs recreational groups). The organization needs to flexible and allow for user folksonomies.	Color coding (or something similar) to differentiate between community activities. Ability to click on a event to see more details. Compatibility / integration with outside calendars?	Layering of events so user can see as few as they want or as many as they want based on the community it is related to or the type of event it is or date or?
Key Learnings	In some ways communities are first class citizens. Many times users will be thinking about a community and then what site/spaces they might have rather than thinking about a site then what communities are attached to it.	A holistic view of communities is important with the 1000 foot view and a more detailed view available.	All items on a calendar are not of equal value. Some are personal and some are group-based and knowing the difference is important. Some are more important because of the community they are related to. And some just are more important. Being able to see the importance I give to a particular calendar item is important.	Being able to add and subtract items from display on the calendar is important. Also same as cell to left.
Key Functionality	Search for communities I can join by name and other attributes Browse for communties I can join by category	Some sort of easy to see listing of organizations I belong to Personal categorization Tagging to allow users to organize by their own folksonomy High level view with some basic information about the community displyaed Detailed view of the community if user chooses	Aggregated calendar view Interoperability and data exchange with other common calendars like google calendar Coding (color) of events by community Coding of events by type is desired Prioritization coding of events	Ability to show a community's events or not (google calendar does this fairly well).