Mary is a student of Life Sciences in B-IT. She comes from Chile. She is using the underground and the bus transportation every day, as it is free for her as a student and also because she does not have a valid driving license for Germany. She uses the VRS website to check timetables and train connections. She is interested in museums and has already visited all the museums in Cologne. She usually takes her map with her to be able to find the way.
With the interview, we got some useful findings. One of them is about the privacy issue. Her point was that some people might not feel very comfortable, if the information which they are looking for is displayed on the screen. Mary also said she does not have a camera phone of her own. The original idea for the interaction with the system was to take a picture of a barcode, and use it to purchase a ticket. It was the view of Marry that this interaction might be too complex for some people.
If the system displays personal information, it will definitely raise some privacy problems and people will not be keen on using the system. There might be a problem, if the interaction between the user and the system requires the user to have the camera functionality provided with his mobile phone. Another issue raised with the interview is the level of complexity of the system. The barcode functionality might not be straightforward to some people
Robin comes from Frankfurt, Germany. He lives in Bonn since three years now. He works at the Einstein café in the center of the city. Since his job is not very demanding and time-consuming, he has a lot of free time to follow ongoing events and go to concerts. He has a passion about visiting historic and famous places, and updates his homepage with every new place that he has visited.
With the interview of Robin, we have found several interesting points of view. Robin liked the layered approach of our system. He has always been facing one problem with city maps. Usually city maps only show places of the city, and not in details. Therefore he has to use two maps at the same time; one for the transportation and another one for the sightseeing places. He has to manage looking at two maps at the same time. In the CityWindow, we can put different layers on our basic maps. At the same time, both the transportation layer and different layers of locations on the map can be displayed. Robin agrees that this will solve his problem in a good way.
Robin had some interesting implementation suggestions. His idea was to have a print option. This will help the user have a better view on the city map. He also pointed out that the system should provide times required to travel from one place to other place, and should show all possible route to the destination. He said this may be helpful when the direct transportation is delayed or not available.
Bashar is a student of chemistry living in the Tannenbush dormitory in Bonn. He is 26 years old and comes from Bangladesh. His faculty is far from the dormitory where he lives; therefore he is taking the Underground everyday to go to classes. He is also a very outgoing person. As a foreigner in Germany, and as a person that likes to spend all his free time by exploring the city, he is the type of user that would definitely take a great advantage of the CityWindow.
Our last interview subject, Bashar, points out that all the information he would look for in such a system will be regarding transportation possibilities. He emphasized that he travels often with underground, and usually he would like to have such a system providing results very quickly. He also asked us what will happen if two persons want to use the system simultaneously.
The importance of having query results very quickly was stressed out. Since the regular user of CityWindow will only have few minutes while waiting to interact with it, it is wise to increase the system response as much as possible.
There was also the question of a situation where multiple users try to access the system at the same time. The CityWindow provides only the possibility of one user interacting with the system at one time.
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