The User Interview

Based on the principles of contextual interview we surveyed a broad spectrum of users given the versatility of cloud computing. Beginning with a general insight of the users we asked them questions on collaborative working environment and as to what would be their system of working in a group including idea exchange and work update and then introduced them to cloud computing based application. We concluded that the users had a mental model about the system but were not well versed with the implementation of the model. We also realized that users understood the impact on optimization and were hesitant to upload all the information and preferred selective uploads. We then condensed our questions based on the user where questions incase of user as a professor gave insights into data acquisition of foreign places for conferences and exchange of culture between student and professor. On the other hand students (mostly teenagers) were more into Gaming, Media Files exchange and entertainment. Conditional interview with a student given the situation of travelling with a group of friends to a picnic spot revealed that the group could be concerned about a common gathering point, places to visit and food they like. Interview with a foreign intern revealed an excitement of a new place with a pinch of nostalgia where the user expressed desire to find places having her country’s culture and food as well. The intern wished for more advanced Google map help. We thus realized that user satisfaction could be easily achieved by development of such applications which ultimately targeted speed and optimization.