Stage 1: User Requirement Analysis

User Profiling

A user profile is a collection of settings and information associate with a user. It can be
defined as the explicit digital representation of the identity of the user with respect to the
operating environment, which could be operating systems, software applications or websites. The
user profile helps in associating characteristics with a user and helps in ascertaining the
interactive behaviour of the user along with preferences (Sumitkumar, 2014).

A user profile can contain personal data. Most user profiles have a set of parameters
which are either mandatory or optional. In some cases, the user profile could have different
sections and tabs. In the case of software applications or network-related ones, user profiles are
usually monitored and maintained by administrators. In some cases, they are maintained by the
users themselves. The user profile enables the personalization of the system and can help in
customizing certain features for their needs (techtarget, 2018).

Preferences and needs of a user can usually be found with the help of a user profile, user
profiles have information for most attributes like system needs, general data, restrictions and
application settings. It can help in specifying the terms for certain features in the system such as
profile visibility, layout view, colour themes, preferred languages, date for mat and message
display format. User profiles can be created, modified and deleted.
User profiling technique used

User profiling allows developers of the Petrosains KL application to understand the needs
of users based on the information gathered and the following section of the paper, discusses in
detail the steps of user profiling, questionnaires conducted, and the results gathered (Yinghui,
2010). Although user profiling helps to achieve personalized systems, certain areas and
procedures are challenging and their complexity leads to unforeseen errors.

Main challenges of user profiling would be initial user profiling set up for a new user and
constantly updating and existing user profiles to adapt to changing requirements of a user,
subsequently developers of the Petrosains KL application did come across such challenges.

In order to deal with difficulties completely, Hybrid User Profiling is used.

Implementation of Hybrid method allowed developers to avoid unforeseen errors that could
occur with the implementation of other methods. The developers of Petrosains KL opt to use
Hybrid user profiling because it is the combination of both implicit and explicit methods (POO,
2018).

On a brief not, implicit user profiling can be said as a knowledge about the user that has
been well known rather than the current knowledge gained. Explicit user profiling is a data
gathered by online surveys, questionnaires and conducting interview which is than analysed to
get to know the user thoughts on a current application (O'SulIivan, 2018).

This gives the developers of Petrosains KL an upper using Hybrid User Profiling because
it enables the developers to take note about the pros and cons of both the method mentioned
earlier and imply into the application that is being developed. This allows the developers to gain
sufficient amount of information to develop the application because via Hybrid user profiling,
both the explicit and implicit user profiling methods is merged and gives plenty of methods and
ideas on how to develop an application for Petrosains KL.
Data gathering technique used – Questionnaires

The data gathering technique chosen is Questionnaire and a questionnaire is a research

instrument consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information from
respondents. Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview. They can be carried
out face to face, by telephone, computer or post. Questionnaires provide a relatively cheap, quick
and efficient way of obtaining large amounts of information from a large sample of people.

Data can be collected relatively quickly because the researcher would not need to be
present when the questionnaires were completed. This is useful for large populations when
interview would be impractical. However, a problem with questionnaires is that the respondents
may lie due to social desirability (McLeod, 2018). The reason why questionnaires was chosen as
a data gathering technique for the project Petrosains KL is because it provides developers with
rapid and precise feedbacks in a short period of time, interviews allowed to meet the target
audience and the stakeholders face to face, in order to understand current difficulties of the
system in depth.
Sample Questionnaires

1. What is your gender?

a. Prefer not to say

b. Female
c. Male
d. Other:

2. What is your age? *

a. 15-20 years old

b. 21-30 years old
c. 31-40 years old

3. What is your current occupation?

a. Student
b. Engineer
c. Lawyer
d. Doctor
e. Other:

4. How often do you visit Petrosains?

a. Once a year
b. Once a month
c. Twice a week
d. Other:

5. How long do you wait to buy tickets at Petrosains during your visits?

a. Less than 30 minutes

b. More than 30 minutes
c. more than an hour
d. Other:
6. Would you agree to have an online ticketing system?

a. Yes
b. No
c. Maybe

7. How do you find the existing tour package provided in Petrosains?

a. Perfect
b. Average
c. Can be improved
d. Regardless

8. Would you prefer a mobile tour guide app for Petrosains?

a. Yes
b. No

9. Do you think that by using the app it would be easier to navigate around Petrosains?

a. Yes
b. No
c. Maybe

10. Do you prefer to read articles or watch videos?

a. Articles
b. Video

11. Do you prefer the news feed should also include articles and journals?

a. Yes
b. No
c. Maybe

12. Which carrier do you use as your telco?

a. DiGi
b. Maxis
c. Celcom
d. U-mobile
e. Telekom
f. Other:
13. Do you have a strong mobile data signal in Petrosains?

a. Yes
b. Maybe

14. Would you agree that the security feature enabled is useful?

a. Yes
b. No

15. What additional features would you like the app to have?
……………………………………..
Analysis of the Questionnaires