Scenario – Juan came, saw, clicked and conquered!

Friday has come, after a long stressful week for Juan who has been struggling with registering for courses, and knowing the place around. As a new boy in Tallinn, something has to cover up for this tire and the weekend would be a boring one. His hobby “partying” would be the most appropriate way to bring some relief, but for Juan the city is new, he does not know where he can join a party, he does not even know names of places, let alone how to get there.

Upon arriving home, Juan opens his backpack and opens to draw the Estonian international student guide. Not knowing exactly what he is looking for he checks at the table of contents. Alas, the third line which points to page 55 is written Estonian culture and events. He quickly goes there and browses through. There he discovers a website www.thepartyguide.ee which suddenly takes his attention. Quickly he checks it on the net and to his surprise all upcoming cultural events are listed in order of their occurrence, there is the address, type of event, and the price as well as a button to view who is attending. Clicking on the button he discovers a list of several students who had signed in for different events. A name of his friend pops up among the listed, no doubt he is tempted to sign in for the event that his friend is already attending, but he does not know how to get to that place. He clicks on the name of the place and an address appears and yet another button “get directions”, clinking on it again, he gets to google map ready to guide him. But google map is not enough because he does not know which bus to take. Clicking on another button “transport” the Tallinn bus  time table appears together with some taxi options. Now he is satisfied and he signs in for one event happening in the old city, the next bus is leaving an hour’s time.

He starts preparing for food, knowing he will make it and he will meet his friend, boredom is treated.

Questions for Participatory design session:

1. What was you first impression about this scenario?
2. What are the weak points of the scenario?
3. Could the described situation be real? Why?
4. Have you ever been in the same situation? If yes how did you react?
5. What would you suggest to improve the scenario?

Answers by female erasmus student

1. The website seems helpfull to find new friends and parties. Especially in the beginning.
2. no
3. yes
4. Not really, i am in the same situation but i dont really like parties. If the website would have other events I would use it.
5. Nothing. Scenario contains all needed information.

Posted by Dydimus Zengenene

Scenario – Kim: “Why not?”

Kim just arrived at his hotel in the City Center and is ready to explore Tallinn. He got plenty of brochures from the Tourist Information Centre and has all necessary practical information (transport, restaurants, places to visit, events etc) to survive. Because of staying in Tallinn only for 2 days Kim doesn’t have much time to go around the city, his goal is to see the most attractive points and discover Tallinn as a Cultural Capital of Europe 2011.

While walking through St. Catherine’s Passage in Old Town Kim meets a bunch of Asian-looking young people speaking Japanese. Those are exchange students from Japan who tell Kim that they are going to see a life performance called “Live News Project” happening somewhere in Rotermanni quarter during 19 hours without any break. Those guys suggest Kim seeing this performance and he replies: “Why not?” As he is kind of interested in street performances and was planning to go in that direction anyway he decides to go there in an hour. He asks Japanese students to repeat the exact address but they suggest him to take his cell phone and visit www.thepartyguide.ee webpage with all the details.

After a few clicks Kim easily gets the address and location info. He suddenly realizes that the place is in 15 minutes walking. When he finally reaches there he enjoys watching young actors’ performance and finds this event very meaningful. That’s how he gets a special impression of Tallinn – old beautiful city with talented and creative people.

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Questions for Participatory design session:

1. What was you first impression about this scenario?
2. What are the weak points of the scenario?
3. Could the described situation be real?
4. How would you act in the same situation?
5. Is the personage realistic?
6. Do you know anybody who was in the same situation?
7. Does Kim benefit from the use of www.thepartyguide.ee webpage?
8. What would you suggest to improve the scenario?

 

Posted by Tatjana Pavlenko

Scenario – Elina goes under

Elina just received her grades for the fall session and finally has free time to go out for a drink. She is quite bored with the places she usually visits and wants to discover something new and special.

After few minutes of surfing the Web and looking for some interesting events on Facebook she realizes that all local parties are discussed mostly in Estonian while English websites publish only official tourist’s information which doesn’t correspond with her needs.

Suddenly Elina remembers that one Erasmus student who was attending the same class with her told something about www.thepartyguide.ee website where you can easily find information about the current events in Tallinn. Elina opens the page and starts looking through it.

At first she expects to see only the list of Erasmus drinking parties, in which she is not interested at all, but then she notices a great number of local estonian events and starts clicking on them. In a very few minutes she finds several parties which seem to be attractive. Elina draws her attention to the series of underground concerts “Protest UNPLUGGED” taking place in Café Protest.

The closest concert is today (what a great luck!) where three bands, as yet unknown to Elina, are playing acoustic music. Besides she really enjoys the acoustic guitar sound, the price of event is just 3 euro, which perfectly suits Elina as she spent up on her recent trip to Stockholm, so she definitely decides to go.

Elina calls her estonian friends and arranges a meeting tonight near Viru Keskus. When they get together Elina tells him about the acoustic concert but Markus remains quite skeptical about this place because he has no idea where it is located and what is happening there.

Luckily www.thepartyguide.ee website has a mobile version, so Elina can easily show Markus all the details about upcoming underground event using her smart phone. Finally, they both are very excited to visit the concert.

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Questions for Participatory design session:

1. What was you first impression about this scenario?
2. What are the weak points of the scenario?
3. What are the storng points of it?
4. Could the described situation be real?
5. How would you act in the same situation?
6. Are both personages realistic?
7. Are their actions logical?
8. Do you know anybody who was in the same situation?
9. Does Elina benefit from the use of www.thepartyguide.ee webpage?
10. What would you suggest to improve the scenario?

 

Answers by female eramus student:

1. She seems desperate to do something. Is bored of the usual erasmus stuff.
2. None, seems to be consistent and logical.
3. Good description of the situation. Her problems and the reasons for this problems are understandable. Good description of the solution using the website.
4. Yes
5. I don’t like technology that much. I would rather call my friends and see whats up. And if nothing turns up i would stay at home and read a book.
6. yes.
7. yes.
8. not yet.
9. obviously yes!
10. Nothing. Scenario is ok as it is.

 

Posted by Tatjana Pavlenko

Scenario – Steve: “Taxi Taxi”

Steve is sitting at home in Mustamäe, he is bored and would be happy if he can find a party to attend together with some fellow international students. At the orientation days he was told that most parties can be found by using this new website called www.thepartyguide.ee. He checks for events posted on www.thepartyguide.ee and finds an event that he feels he should go to in the city centre of Tallinn.

Unfortunately he is worried about how he will come back home late during the night. Luckily the website provides information about how to get home. He presses the getting home button and types his destination, Mustamäe,  and the time he intends to leave the party (4am). Immediately there appears a list of people who are attending the party and also want to go home to Mustamäe around 4am. Some of them have left contact information. In addition the website displays a list of available transportation at that time (only taxis at 4am).

Steve contacts a few of the people from the list and organizes a shared taxi using the provided taxi service numbers.

Afterwards he calls a few friends and tells them about the party. They meet at his place, drink some beer and go to the party.

At 4am Steve leaves the party, hoping that the other people would do the same. When the taxi arrives he is still alone outside. He checks his cellphone for any missed calls but there are none. Unfortunately he has not saved the telephone numbers of his “taxi mates”. Luckily www.thepartyguide.ee provides a mobile version of the website as well. Steve checks it and contacts them again. Five minutes later they are on their way home.

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Questions for Participatory design session:

1. What was you first impression about this scenario?
2. What are the weak points of the scenario?
3. Could the described situation be real? Why?
4. Have you ever been in the same situation? If yes how did you react?
5. Do you know anybody who was in the same situation?
6. What would you suggest to improve the scenario?

Posted by Arne Böckmann

Scenario – Juan calls for friends

Juan is enjoying at a party with some Erasmus students, he found that the party is very interesting (a “must attend” party type for international students). He feels that every student who visits Estonia must attend at least one such party. He therefore wants to invite all international students.

He knows Tallinn is a difficult city for new students especially when it comes to knowing and remembering names and locations of places.

He has his mobile phone, he then goes to Google maps, searches for his current location and copies the link and posts it on Facebook to invite some of his colleagues but he can reach out to some students who are not his Facebook friends. So some of his friend came and no new person has turned up.  He feels also that it is hectic to go through this whole process. He wishes there is a better mobile based system that could make it easy for him to invite absolutely all interested international students at once.

When one of his friends arrives he advises Juan that he could have just posted this event on THEPARTYGUIDE system so that everybody can know about the event. He then decides to try it out right away; he takes out his mobile phone again and goes to www.thepartyguide.ee. He presses the button publish current location then types a quick text describing the event and presses the button publish.  The event immediately pops up on the current event list where other events are already posted. Within thirty minutes some new International students who have been looking for interesting parties happily arrive.

by Dydimus Zengenene & Arne Böckmann

Juan just came back to the dormitory after his Orientation Day at the TLU where he got no useful information about what is going on in town tonight and he doesn’t want to stay alone in the dorm.  He doesn’t know many people yet just some random people he added on Facebook.

He then decides to log into Facebook, one of the only social network he’s using, in order to see what those people suggest or know about current events. Juan started to talk with an online Erasmus student. Together they began to look for some information. Unfortunately they found out that the websites are not linked between each other and all information is messy. The navigation is often not understandable and some webpages that seemed to be good are in Estonian (rada7.ee).

Luckily a tutor showed up on FB and posted a link on the Tallinn ESN wall. Juan checks the link and here it is:www.thepartyguide.ee, a website which gives useful information in English about cultural events around the city and is also compatible with the phone.

Juan liked the sober and logical design of the website. Information about events were clear and complete. Events were rated by the number of participant and the closest upcoming events were on the top. The list contains user generated events as well as official events posted by e.g. pub owners. Descriptions include location, price, time and even a list of people who are attending.

Juan and his friend then decided to go out together to one of that event. On the way they got lost because they forgot to write down the address. They then just connect on the website through their phone and get to the place without any other complication.

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1. What do you think about this scenario ?

2. Does it looks real to you, why ?

3. Do you feel concerned ?

4. Can you think of a similar situation that might have concerned you ?

5. Would you use the “www.thepartyguide.ee” webpage, why ?

6. What are your suggestions to help us improve the project ?

by Anna Pohorecka

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The above questions have been asked to an erasmus student:

Question: what do you think about the scenario? … Is real or not real, possible or not possible?

Answer: Yeah its kinda real.

Question: can you imagine now this guy doing all this things?

Answer: Yeah I am imagining, its just that its wired, that he doesnt have anybody. cause if he lives somewhere in the student place like the dormitory then defenitly there will be someone who has information aswell.

Question: What if he is the first who arrived in his room.

Answer: Well as orientation day was happening, it means there are more students for sure.

Question: So it doesn’t really look real to you?

Answer: Hmm, no it feels kinda real. Just like I said one little detail.

Question: But would it change something if he was with another person that doesnt know anything.

Answer: No, probably not.

Question: So like for instane you and your roomate could have been in the same situation.

Answer: Yep, i think so.

Question: And can you think of a situation, small story or anekdot?

Answer: What do you mean?

Question: Like when you arrived what happened to you, like a situation that would be somehow similiar to this situation here.

Answer: Hmm, no I was always communicating with all other students from the dorm so I was updated with the events and stuff, I didn’t even check on the computer.

Question: And the others, where did they get the information?

Answer: I don’t know, I suppose they got information from websites, or from tutors or other students.. like a chain.

Question: And do you think that from the new students there is somebody that might be in this situtation. Like do you know some students that are not well integrated and might feel more concerend.

Answer: Yeah I think the students that don’t have a good level of English, they might be a bit lost in the beginning. cause they might be not that comfortable with going and asking other people. And on the internet they can only find it in Estonian and English.

Question: So you would put the information in other languages. Like for you it would be more usefull to be able to change the language of the website?

Answer: No I don’t think cause English is like basic, everyone is supposed to know it. But there are some students who are coming to learn their own language like to develop their studies that they are having at home. So they kind of have just some knowledge of English. So for this students i think the best thing would be to have some people who are watching them in the beginning like tutors but are really taking care of them. Maybe participating in some events together so they can integrate much better.

Question: Would you use the party guide?

Answer:  Hmm I wouldn’t go straight away to the website, but if I am receiving email and their is a link then I would go there. But I need email for each event. I am not updating my information by looking on websites. I need this reminder like updating.

Question: Would you use it on your phone?

Answer: No, no internet on phone.

Question: And what would be your suggestion to help to improve the project in this scenario. What would you change. What do you think would the website need more?

Answer: Like I said, it’s really good thing if each new student who comes here registers there once and gets reminders.

Question: So like a newsletter? Make it compulsory maybe?

Answer: Not compulsory, but as a part of the orientation and it should be done there, so no one is lost.

Question: Thanks!

Transcript by Arne Böckmann