Week 8 Update

This Week:

For the past few weeks we have dedicated our time to starting the development of our product and the creation and design of our test plan. The product's development has come off to a good start and has a great deal of functionality that was laid out in our design. A lot of this is due to our functional prototype being the base of our implementation.

The initial test plan draft has been finished this week. We don't believe that there will be much change needed before our testing begins. For test subjects we hope to have at least one subject from each user type we have laid out in the testing plan. Our initial task scenarios were not designed correctly and needed refactoring, but that has since been resolved.

Overall:

Task: Test Plan
People involved: All team members
Hours: 2-3 hrs per team member

Task: Product

People involved: All team members

Hours: 0.2 hr per team member

Next Week:

In the next weeks we will be preparing for actual testing of our product and use of our test plan. We will bring the test plan draft to a completed state and finish development on the product into a beta version. As part of our preparation for the testing of our product, we will be seeking test subjects, particularly those of our defined user types.

Challenges, Risks, and Issues:

Challenges: 

Our team has found it challenging to continue to refine the prototype and keep ahead of deliverables for this project. We have not had issues with it yet, but there has been significant effort to keep driving forward on the project as the semester progresses. With limited time in each of our busy schedules, we have each had to increase our attention to time management. We also believe that there will be issues with finding test subjects that fall into our user types, but we are hopeful and at worst we can get them for an online test. Unfortunately we won't be able to monitor them from within the same room, but this can be remedied thanks to video chat via Google hangouts.

Risks: 

We are still encountering the same risk as last week, where as the semester is speeding up team members may re-prioritize classes/other activities ahead of this project. This is still being mitigated by getting early starts on deliverables and continuing to have weekly team meetings regardless if the deliverable is due that week.
An additional risk arises because of two main factors - team members are becoming busier and more focused on other classes and projects, and we are completing work for this project more and more on an individual basis. We run into a risk that a section of some document may reference a new or updated feature or design that the rest of the team is unaware about. We are attempting to mitigate this by finding time to read or glance over each others sections and putting personal responsibility on updating others if an issue arises.

Issues: 

[still no significant issues encountered thus far]

Week 6 Update

This Week:

In the past weeks, our team has continued to refine our prototype and have been working the the design document for the product. The functional prototype has come along very nicely and has an estimated 75% of the functionality we've outlined. A user is able to select difficulty levels and topics and have them updated in the questions, as well as answer questions and receive feedback on their answers (whether they were correct or not). Other functionality/features our team had discussed but are not implemented yet include a help section, as well as statistics for users. 

The design document has been completed this week and includes information on the program structure, design rationale, a detailed description of the user interface as well as design principles followed, interface design rationale, and screenshots of the current prototype. All team members took sections and completed them for this effort. Work on the design document accounted for the majority of the work our team members did this and last week.

Overall:
Task: Design Document
People involved: All team members
Hours: 2-3 hrs per team member

Task: Functional Prototype

People involved: All team members

Hours: 0.2 hr per team member

Next Week:

In the next weeks we will be preparing for heuristic evaluations on our prototype by our classmates, as well as looking forward to user testing afterwards. We will also be developing a beta version of our application. In total we estimate developing a beta application will take 4 hrs per team member with all team members involved. Doing heuristic evaluations for other teams and incorporating the feedback we receive into our application will take an estimated 1-2 hours per team member with all members involved.

Challenges, Risks, and Issues:

Challenges: 

Our team has found it challenging to continue to refine the prototype and keep ahead of deliverables for this project. We have not had issues with it yet, but there has been significant effort to keep driving forward on the project as the semester progresses. With limited time in each of our busy schedules, we have each had to increase our attention to time management.

Risks: 

We are still encountering the same risk as last week, where as the semester is speeding up team members may re-prioritize classes/other activities ahead of this project. This is still being mitigated by getting early starts on deliverables and continuing to have weekly team meetings regardless if the deliverable is due that week.
An additional risk arises because of two main factors - team members are becoming busier and more focused on other classes and projects, and we are completing work for this project more and more on an individual basis. We run into a risk that a section of some document may reference a new or updated feature or design that the rest of the team is unaware about. We are attempting to mitigate this by finding time to read or glance over each others sections and putting personal responsibility on updating others if an issue arises.

Issues: 

[still no significant issues encountered thus far]