Making Traxx - Design development project - Semester 2, CDM DIT 2016.
This project was part of our UI/UX Design module. We were formed into teams and asked to develop the project to proposal level over the proceeding three weeks.
Barry Healy, Katherina Fay, Malak Malibari, Saliyah Alshamrani: MSc CDM DIT 2016
The submitted document is included below.
Discussion:
This project was the culmination of the first part of our UID/UX lecture course from John Wood. I had signed onto the class and had been attending lectures despite the fact that it wasn't part of my course load. John's classes were legendary, coming highly recommended by our lecturers and past students, and were well worth the extra time needed.
Our team was a mix of two students receiving no credit and two who were. I generated the idea, which the team agreed upon and we set to work. The project was initially divided up for the first phase of research, including the "Features Matrix" we created, and from then on we broke down the work as the need arose, or as people asked to take on specific parts. After some initial problems and stalled momentum, I became lead of the project and began coordinating efforts. I ended the project taking overall control, compiling the research, generating most of the graphics and publishing the final document.
Looking back now at the work, I am still quite proud of what was achieved. John's feedback was good, very valid and helpful. In retrospect, we absolutely should have gone out and met Users face-to-face, gotten their feedback, and seen some of our competitor apps being used in anger. The issue had been raised while working on the project but, for me, it boiled down to having a full workload of other modules with other projects to complete. They had to take priority and I simply couldn't afford to take the extra time to complete the research.
I feel that the project suffered from this lack of face-to-face contact and missed an important aspect of research. I think our other work, however, was strong, particularly the competitor feature analysis, and our various surveys and findings. Our Personas were well received and I feel adequately covered our User types and some Use Cases. The inclusion of the MoSCoW document neatly tied up our findings and laid out a considered framework for further development were it ever to happen.
The notes on the document design and layout are of course completely valid. The final compilation and creation of the document was quite rushed, with some mistakes/issues that we recognised having to be left in due to the impending deadline. It was a tough project to complete, and due to the circumstances, it was without a cohesive and dedicated team at times. I still feel the work stands up reasonably well though and I think we achieved a good standard despite the challenges.