Knit
Scenarios
Joanna
Scenario 1
Joanna is on a pre-med track and if she is not at the library studying for her classes, she is working as a waitress at a local diner. She moved across the country for school and since she doesn’t have any free time she hasn’t made very many new friends. She is still learning how to adjust to living without her parents and taking care of herself and often times she feels homesick. She misses her old friends but has difficulty reaching out due to her busy schedule.
Joanna is looking for an app that can quickly show her important information about her friends and reminds her when she has neglected to keep up with someone. She can’t take the time to skype her friends and family regularly but still wants to maintain intimacy in her friendships. She uses her phone as her clock, calendar, planner, etc… and carries it with her all the time so a phone application is ideal for her. Since she pays out of state tuition and needs to work she can’t afford to pay for an app.
After going to class in the morning and working all afternoon, Joanna finally gets off of work and runs to catch her bus home. Since she can’t study on her 10-minute bus ride she has a few minutes of down time to just relax. She checks her phone and sees that tomorrow is her old friend Shelly’s birthday and is reminded that she hasn’t talked to Shelly for two weeks. She smiles thinking of all the years they spent together growing up and longs to be home to celebrate with her friend or even give her a hug. She types out a message to her friend wishing her well and schedules it to be posted to her friend’s fb wall at 8 the next morning. When she gets home, before diving into homework for the rest of the evening, she takes a video of herself playing happy birthday on the piano and sends that to her friend as well with a few heart emoji’s.
Lin
Lin is a first year International student from China at an American University whose goals are to have fun with old friends, know when his friends are free, and make new friends.
His parents are well-off enough to pay for his school and living expenses so he doesn’t have to work and he primarily focuses on academics. Lin has a good amount of free time everyday and he actively tries to make new friends but still feels more comfortable with his old friends. He regularly goes to a Chinese international student club to feel more at home as living in a new place is starting to give him some culture shock. Lin is an active gamer and uses his computer as much as his phone. He wants to be able to use both in maintaining his friendships.
Scenario 1
Lin gets home from his classes at 1:30pm. He is tired of translating every thing he said today in his head and really wants to just speak freely and make jokes with some friends. He pulls out his phone to call a good friend from home but when he clicks on his friend’s contact info his phone reminds him that it is only 5:30 am in Beijing and his friend may not be awake yet. So instead of calling, he decides to send a couple of his friends a group message saying that he is free and wants to play a game on steam in the next few hours if any of them have time before school. He turns his profile to “free” indicating that he is free to be contacted and while he waits for someone to respond he makes lunch.
At around 2:30pm his phone buzzes and he sees that two of his friends want to play a game with him on steam. He goes to his computer, logs onto steam and video chats with his friends while playing. Though in a foreign place, while laughing and playing with his friends, he feels at home
Using our personas and information from our research interviews we created Scenarios to flesh out Joanna and Lin. The Scenarios were used to illustrate how the app is used to meet the expectations of the user and enhance their experience of connecting with friends. Because Lin and Joanna are such different individuals the scenarios gave us the opportunity to explore how different features of the app meet various needs.
With our scenarios in place we knew what we wanted the app to accomplish, so the next step in the process was to figure out how Knit would present itself and provide these services.