Places:History Use Cases

Example users

Using the method of Alan Cooper, we should identify concrete examples of some of the types of users that want to use history, what their experince level is, what their goals are, etc.

Mike

Mike is a Mozilla developer that knows a lot about Firefox. He wants to go back to the bug he was working on the previous afternoon, but doesn't remember the bug number and wasn't assigned to it, so he can't find it in his bug list.

As the bug was entered by Dude (below), the title has nothing to do with the bug and looks like many similary bugs in Mike's browsing history.

Drew

Drew considers himself an avid Firefox user and thinks he knows a lot about the browser and the development (sometimes more than he actually does). He downloads the alpha and beta releases and tries to use them as his main browser, sometimes to his detriment.

He is trying to find a post on the Mozillazine forums describing a workaround for a moderately annoying Firefox bug that keeps reformatting his hard drive and causing his printer to burst into flames. He thinks he saw it 2-4 days ago, bit it was actually 6 days ago. The titles and URLs on Mozillazine are not able to identify the post, because they are just general "forum" related data. He browsed Mozillazine a lot in the interim, and has tons of other Mozilla related browsing history.

Dude

Dude is a 16 year old who has grown up with computers. He pushes all the buttons, but doesn't necessarily know what he's doing. He learns quickly and will remember the most efficient way to do something if he stumbles across it.

He is trying to find a Warez site he visited the previous weekend so he can download more Warez. Because of the nature of the site, he can't find it on Google. He remembers a lot of details about the site. For examle, he remembers he visited it last Sunday evening because that was the last time he was downloading warez. He also vaguely remembers the edgy black layout and some contents of the page describing some leet-speekized version of "Adobe Photoshop" which hes doesn't remember exatly. He doesn't remember the URL (because it was an IP address), or the title (because it was some random words designed to sound cool, like most of the other sites he visits).

Henrietta

Henrietta is a 55 year old who isn't very good with computers, but is comfortable browsing the internet, using search engines, and typing in URLs. She has a vague idea about things like bookmarks, but doesn't use them.

Her goal is to revisit an interesting literature site she saw sometime last week to show a visiting friend. She was unable to find it with a quick Google search. She does not remember any part of the URL or the title, but would probably recognise the title if she saw it.

She is not very curious about the browser and won't generally try something unless somebody or something tells her how to do it. She vaguely remembers he son Mike (the Mozilla developer above) tell her something about "History" and finding old sites. She doesn't know really what that is, but notices the menu with the same label. She might try one or two things that look promising, but will give up quickly if she doesn't understand what is going on or doesn't find what she's looking for.