We are targetting the following general user types:
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Beginning R Users -- These users are people who would like to use R, but find the language a hurdle. These could be students just learning statistics, students in other disciplines who don't care to learn the language, and people who are interested in R but don't know where to start.
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Auxilary Users -- These are people who don't care to learn R, but still need to use the R engine for auxilary activities. An example of this user is a Finance Student who would like to use some libraries available to R, but who do not have the time nor desire to learn the language. Another example is a software developer doing performance tuning. These users tend to need only very basic statistical analysis tools, which R can handle, but they do not have the time to learn the R language.
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Action Developers -- There is a concept of an "action" in obveRsive which is a way of designing small R scripts which can be filled in by the target user using a nice graphical interface. These actions are created by people who want to use the features of obveRsive to make their packages easier to use. To support these users, we will include minor debugging capabilities and a "direct-to-R" console for working out the fine points in their action scripts. We may also write an Action Builder which will help design these actions quickly and with fewer errors. Our objective is to make ObveRsive easily extensible through the devlopment of new action scripts.
Users Not Directly Targetted
The following users are specifically not targetted by this project. This does not mean that these users may find obveRsive useful, it just means that we are not considering their needs as yet (if ever).
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Professors -- While these individuals may use the system in their class, we are specifically avoiding adding features for their needs such as training materials, testing methods, specific downloads for their discipline, etc. These users may be targetted in the future, but are currently outside of the scope of this project as the basic underlying framework is developed.
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Professional Statisticians -- It is believed that these individuals will not find very much need for obveRsive as their use of R is very different from our primary target users. Included in this user type are researchers, statisticians, and programmers since they are likely to use R very differently from our target users.
