SCENARIO
- Agents: Persona Bradley (as the team leader), other teammates including Persona Sherry as an example. His cell phone.
- Setting: Persona Bradley going to a game from his house. He is hitching a ride from Sherry, and she’s running a bit late to pick him up which means he won’t be at the game early enough to see if someone has forgot about the game until it’s too late.
- Objective: To figure out who’s all going to be at the game, and see if he needs to call anyone else to play. Also, he needs to be able to set peoples positions.
OBSTACLES
Not everyone gets back to him quickly, because some of them are driving themselves, and one person on the team’s phone isn’t working. He could feel short on players, and might need to start calling some of the part-time players to see if they can come last minute. Or he could realize that he is sitting at an excess and would have to tell someone they can’t play this week. He also needs to figure out their positions in his head, or in the form of text. No visual stimulus. He could accidentally forget someone that said they were coming, meaning that at the game he will be having to tell someone they can’t play, or that he won’t take them into account when setting up the positions. People could be running late and texting him to let him know, so he begins to juggle conversations and the line-up positions in his head.
POSSIBLE DESIGN INTERVENTION
A roster management application. The team leader would have the majority of the functionality, while the rest of the team would just have some of the functionality. For each game, the team leader is able to send out an RSVP request. The order of replying would help dictate who gets to play if too many people are capable of playing. Then the team leader would be able to assign people to their positions in advanced, the players would be able to prepare mentally for their specific position, and they’d also be able to see who else is going so they can arrange carpooling in advanced. This would encourage more designated drivers for post game activities.
RESOLUTION
With the use of the design intervention, more people rsvp appropriately in time, because they realized that space on the team was filling up quickly. It allowed Bradley to set up the line-up in advanced, relieving a lot of stress. There was a shortage of girls coming out this week, and he was able to call a couple of the part-time girls in advance to notify them. While in the end, the team was still shorter than they could have been, the entire process of figuring out who’d be there was streamlined a lot more efficiently. The only problem that arose was that one player realized he’d be stuck playing defense when he wanted to play a more offensive role, and made other plans for the night.
ANALYSIS
The team leader is experiencing stress due to a lack of communication from the rest of his team. He is stuck making changes to the line-up on the ride to the game, and has to do so in his head. People have forgotten about the game, or have forgotten to RSVP, meaning the team leader is stuck reconfiguring the team at the last minute, which makes it excessively difficult to get extra players to come out. Meanwhile, the player is unsure what position she’ll be playing, how long she’ll have to play for, and how good the other team is.
Fantastic Four Fingers 