User Experience Design thinking: User roles & scenarios

[Madalena-15]

In one stage of the UX design typical workflow, the team (including other stakeholders) usually get together to discuss questions and ideas on by placing post-its and drawings on the whiteboard.

As we are a remote team, I thought of creating these ‘digital whiteboards’ to get together everyone in the Chapter project to open up any questions and ideas that you all have. While I am aware we already have issues and user stories for this, I like to this having a digital whiteboard would be beneficial based on:

• That some may prefer the visualisation format
• It may help new contributors who have just join to gather information quickly as well as participating in the discussion.
• to get the conversation flowing!

How this works

If you have any ideas or questions to add to the board, write it in the comment, and I shall update the board with your ideas/questions on the post-it. Remember that there is no right or wrong, so please post them!

This is a place to discuss what roles are there in the story and point out short scenarios of what each role are ‘meant’ to do when using Chapter. Also, it is useful to confirm what each role can do and cannot do.

[kothaicap]

Hi Madalena

I looked at your whiteboard and was interested in the visitor story. The thing I like about meetup.com is that a visitor can:

1. View an event
2. Read the discussions between members planning the event
3. Contribute questions and comments in the discussions to clarify the event details
4. The visitor may then decide to RSVP if they think the event is right for them.

I hope this is useful for the MVP, it will help people new to the chapter decide if they want to join.

[Madalena-15]

@kothaicap

Hello Kothai,

Thank you for sharing your ideas for the visitor story. Although they are likely to be post-MVPs, your ideas are great to look into more further.

I will be adding them up to the board and update this issue. But in the meantime, I would like to discuss with you on your ideas and will go through each one.

1. View an event

I believe a visitor would be able to view the event even without being registered to the Chapter instance. If I am wrong, please can someone correct me on this.

2. Read the discussions between members planning the event

Could you please elaborate more on this?

3. Contribute questions and comments in the discussions to clarify the event details

Just to make sure, would that be a visitor who is not logged in or registered to Meetup.com or a visitor who is registered to Meetup.com, but not part of the group?

If we were to include a feature where comments and questions can be made, let’s say, in a specific event page, I would agree that a Chapter instance member could do this. On the other hand, it isn’t recommended that a visitor (who is not registered/signed in to Chapter instance) are able to participate in discussions based on security reasons.

If you (and others) agree on my suggestion, I could add this to a post-it note of what a visitor can’t do in that scenario.

I think I need to make the heading ‘Chapter member’ clearer.

4. The visitor may then decide to RSVP if they think the event is right for them.

Having read your ideas in #329, while I do agree with @allella, that most users would already be a member of their chapter group, you do make a valid point where in later future we could be seeing more of new visitors entering and joining.

If we didn’t have the feature of having an open area of discussion within chapter members, what would be an alternative solution for a visitor to feel assured that they are joining in the right group?

[kothaicap]

Hi Madalena

Thanks for your thoughts on my comments.

I had another look at meetup right now and I can see they've changed quite a bit, for the worse I feel (and not just about this particular issue). Before, a visitor could scroll through events, click through to one, and then not only read the description, see attendees, time and venue, but also see the comments section. The comments are useful to ask things the organiser may not have included in the description. Now I can see the comments only if I am a member of the meetup group but not necessarily signed up for the particular activity.

My understanding of meetup's vision when it set out was to create communities of people online who would then want to meet offline. A bit like a dating site, where you check each other out before committing to meet in person :-) Having just a list of events that one can sign up to doesn't have the advantage of creating community.

As an example, if this github group were a meetup, then I could ask: "Is this group open to newbies who don't know any code?" or "Do I need to bring anything?" Then anyone from the group could answer. If someone else has already asked that question, having the comments area public means I wouldn't have to ask it again, I could see their answer.

It's this socialising aspect of meetup that I feel made it a success, breaking down barriers to socialising. Like you, I live in London, and before meetup, we all used to have narrow social circles, living in disconnected bubbles. When meetup came it just opened the whole city up and London became uplifting and vibrant, with people flowing from one type of group to another. In other towns where meetup hasn't taken off people are still restricted to socialising in small bubbles of people who are just like them. It can be stifling.

My understanding was that Chapter would be aimed at non-profits. This is why I was interested to join. What non-profits need are more participants at their social activities, rather than simply a way of better organising existing participants.

But I'm fine with this going for a later version if it seems to you that it's off the path of where you're already going. As I've only just joined I don't know enough about where you are already at to know if this is on course or off it!

Privacy issues Yes, I agree that security issues are important. Say, for example, that there was a group for cancer survivors, or an LGBT group, then it might be good for people to choose which profile they want to sign up with, an anonymous member identity or their normal user name. So it may be that the member could sign up with an anonymous identity for one group and a normal identity for another. It might be good if they could also change this retrospectively, so where they have signed up to an activity with their normal identity they could go back and change it to an anonymous identity.