User experience prototype requirements PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

Transcription

1 Tallinn University Institute of Informatics User experience prototype requirements PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN Authors Roger Puks Erkki Saarnit Ekaterina Shafeeva Maria Angelica Medina Angarita Lecturer Peeter Normak, PhD Tallinn, fall 2015

2 Introduction A team of four students of the Human Computer Interaction master programme of Tallinn University, have identified the need to develop requirements for a user interface in the period corresponding to the academic fall semester of 2015, by conducting an extensive literature review and analysing previous similar projects to model structured requirements that can be used for prospective user experience research studies. This expressed needs analysis derived from a review of the previous efforts to understand user experience, group brainstorming, different observations of the team regarding their experience in user interface and an understanding of some of the students needs from the department of informatics in Tallinn University. Project Management Approach The Project Manager, Erkki Saarniit, has the overall authority and responsibility for managing and executing this project according to the Project Plan. The project team will consist of members with experience in programming, graphic design and user experience. The project manager will also work with all resources to perform the project planning. All project and additional management plans will be reviewed and approved by the project sponsor before they are executed in order to have better performance (10 Tips for Project Management Prosperity, 2015). Objective The main goal for the project is to develop the requirements for a user interface prototype, which is needed for a Tallinn University research project to assess the influence of web interface interactions on user experience across different devices. Project Scope Project Purpose & Justification 1

3 The project has been created to speed up the workflow of development and design teams when creating user interface prototypes. The objectives of this project are as follows: To study different interface elements in order to gain input. To create a set of user interface prototype requirements through different means. To evaluate the final outcome in a hypothetical project. Project Description The project shall be divided into three standalone milestones, with the final milestone being the successful production of the examples of user interface prototype requirements. The initial milestones of the project are as follows: Understanding needs, interviewing and further studies Investigating devices and interfaces Developing requirements for designers and developers, writing user stories Feedback, debriefing and next steps Project deliverables The following deliverables must be met upon the successful completion of the project. Any changes to these deliverables must be approved by both the project manager as well as the sponsor. A detailed study on different UI elements across various devices. Set of usable UI prototype requirements. Staffing Management Plan Most of the work within this project will be performed internally in the team. Staffing requirements include the following: Project Manager (1 position) the project manager will be responsible for the principal management for the Project. However, all the team members will aid with the planning, creating, and managing all work activities, variances, tracking, reporting, communication, performance evaluations and internal coordination. Also, all resources must be approved by the manager 2

4 before beginning any project work. Other responsibilities include assisting with risk identification, determining impacts of change requests, and weekly status reporting. Programmer (1 position) the programmer will be responsible for coding assessment and for assisting the Project Manager for checking quality control and assurance of technological standards. He will also be responsible for maintaining quality control and assurance logs throughout the project. UX designer (1 position) the UX designer will be responsible for creating and tracking quality control and assurance standards. She should also compile all project documentation and reporting into organizational formats regarding UX. Graphic designer (1 position) the graphic designer is responsible for creating any type of visual support the project needs. She will also be responsible for ensuring all graphical needs are met by the actual end-users of the prototype. All testing resources should be coordinated. The project team list is the following: Name Title Skype Erkki Saarniit Project Maria Angelica Medina Angarita Graphic Ekaterina Shafeeva UX Roger Puks In addition to the main team, external experts will be used to get feedback to the idea and prototype s requirements, and to help iterating the project to next steps. Milestone List The below chart lists the major milestones for the UX requirements Project. This chart consists only of major project milestones and smaller milestones are not included on this chart but are 3

5 included to the project time-schedule. If there are any scheduling delays or any approved changes to these milestones, then the project team will be informed by the project manager. Milestone schedule MILESTONE DESCRIPTION DATE Complete Requirements Gathering All requirements are determined and presented in class (Needs Analysis, Project Plan, Risk Analysis) 15/10/2015 Developing requirements for designers and developers, writing user stories Initial requirements set is made and iterated at least two times with the help of external experts 20/11/2015 Feedback and debriefing, next steps Final iteration done with external experts; examples of requirements done and validated with experts 08/12/2015 Communications Management Plan This Communications Management Plan sets the communications scope for this project. This plan identifies and defines the roles of UX requirements project team members as they approach the communications and will be updated according to communication change. The communications matrix which is presented in the plan maps the communication requirements of this project. The Project Manager will take the lead role in ensuring effective communications on this project. The communications requirements are documented in the Communications Matrix below. The Communications Matrix will be used as the guide for what form of communication to use in what situation. Communication management plan: Communication Description Frequency Format Participants/ Deliverable Owner Type Distribution Everyday discussions Questions and answers to daily issues when needed Skype Project team Answers to questions in Project Manager 4

6 Skype Weekly Status Report summary of project status Weekly Project team Status Report Project Manager Weekly Project Team Meeting Meeting to review action register and status Weekly Skype Project team Updated Action Register Project Manager Project Bi-Weekly Review (PBWR) Present metrics and status to team Every two weeks In Person Project team Status and Metric Presentation Project Manager Project Gate Reviews Present closeout of project phases and kickoff next phase when needed In Person Project team Phase completion report and phase kickoff Project Manager Technical Design Review Review of any technical designs or work associated with the when needed In Person Project team Technical Design Package Project Manager project Communication Conducts Meetings (face-to-face) All the meeting will be scheduled in advance be Project manager and at least the 2 days prior to any scheduled meeting agenda should be send to all participants. The meeting participants include timekeeper (this role requires to ensure that the team follow the agenda) and the recorder (this role requires to take all the notes during the meeting and send it to all team members after the meeting). should be sent to the correct project participants according to the communication matrix above based on its content. The Project Manager should be included on any pertaining to the project. Informal Communications (Skype): On a daily basis, the members of the team communicate on Skype about the updates on the project. All members of the team live under the same time schedule, but in different physical locations, therefore the chat is the best option to discuss everyday issues. 5

7 Project Scope Management Plan The objective of the project will rely on creating a solution to discrepancies between different UI web models, leaving out user experience or user engagement evaluations, nor any other evaluation of a current trend. The management scope for the UX requirements Project will not be the sole responsibility of the Project Manager. The Project Manager and all team members will establish and approve documentation for measuring project scope which includes deliverable quality checklists and work performance measurements. Proposed scope changes may be initiated by the Project Manager or any member of the project team. Resource Calendar The UX requirements Project will require all project team members for the entire duration of the project although levels of effort will vary as the project progresses. The Project is scheduled to last about 2 months with 8 hour work weeks. Fig. 1. Project plan Time-table. 6

8 Plans for dissemination/exploitation of the results Through several iterative sessions, the project is expected to conclude with a thoroughly constructed set of requirements for preparing, designing and finalising web user interface prototype. The iterativeness of the work process shall guarantee that all challenges met during the work process shall be dealt with before finalizing the results and finishing the project. The short term goal of the project shall be for the user interface requirements to be created and released, with them emphasizing on design, meaning that the requirements could be useful for various different segments of web development - online commerce, gaming, tools etc. The long term goal would be for these requirements to remain valid for as long as possible. Creating a set of user interface requirements that remain valid indefinitely cannot be done, since the field is ever-changing. Potential impacts Due to the informatic nature of the project, and regarding different aspects of the project environment (PESTLE analysis), there are three main areas in which the project can influence the most: economical, social and technological. Market and user opportunities The market can be considered as the community of web developers. Consequently, the requirements for the prototype are based on the needs of web developers. Furthermore, the needs of web developers are influenced about new technological possibilities, which, in this case, are limited by different standards used in web, such as capabilities of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but also operation systems and web browsers. Social impact The social need of such prototypes is based on the community of web developers. Higher interaction level among developers and larger wide-spread codebase allows to save time and 7

9 money and helps developer to focus on the main functionality, at the same time using the newest technological capabilities. Socially all counterparties of the web development, starting from the investor and ending with the end user, are really interested the the solution that is provide is stable. Usually it means that sufficient number of people have tested some solution in different devices, and, therefore, the production versions are considered stable and probably easily scalable. Economical advantage As mentioned before, effective web development means higher efficiency and lower development costs. Nevertheless, the sponsors of projects need to balance between the budget and the scope of the project. It means that actually not only what, but also how to develop, is an economic decision that financiers of the project need to understand. Usually the sponsors are not aware of technical details and it is difficult to tell whether one solution that take more time is actually financially better than the other version that takes less development hours. Hence, the research of the prototype will actually try to find out which effort has more influence of user experience, and which has less. The later held research that is not part of this project will target to answer some of those questions. The end results should be to give the investor some idea of what extra work is worth the hours. In order to develop such prototypes so that they could be studied accordingly, sufficient rules and requirements need to be set for designers and developers in order to reach the wanted end result. Budget Due to the academic character of the project, there is no obvious expressed necessity for sponsors, and the time invested by the students will not be translated into financial statements. In the case of needing a high sum of money (which is not seen by any means necessary in any aspect of the project), authorities of the department of informatics of Tallinn University will be contacted. Nevertheless, we can assess the price of such work would be around 50 EUR per hour, and considering the amount of hours spent, which is 164, we can calculate 50x164 = 8200 EUR. 8

10 The following list contains a summary budget based on the planned cost components and estimated costs required for the successful completion of the project. Combined hours of work from all the team members 8200 EUR Communal services of the Interaction Lab 50 EUR Technological instruments 2000 EUR TOTAL budget EUR None of the budget items will be actually paid out to anyone. The estimates are based on the assumption that if the project would be outsourced, what could be the project costs. Risk Management Plan In a case of a risk, a methodical process by which the project team identified, scored, and ranked the various risks was considered, however, it was never necessary to take it into account. Every effort was made to proactively to identify the risks before they occur to implement a mitigation strategy, however, the risks that were presented were either expected or quickly solved. Weaknesses such as the lack of time by some of the group members or threats like the lack of experts time were relieved by planning the resources ahead and carefully. Even when there 9

11 were only bi weekly personal meetings, the communication on skype and was constant, having a casual character on the first and formal in the former. One of the other difficulties that were expected was how to contact experts in the field. Most of them had busy schedules and could only agree to cooperate if they could see they could also benefit from the results of the project. However, this was expected and the project was taken into accomplishment without any damage. Not being able (or not coming up with the idea on time) to communicate the progress of the project didn't allow us to receive appropriate feedback from our classmates, which at the end didn't cause a big impact to the project, however, it may have been useful and perhaps change the outcome of the project to a more inter-institutional result. Summary Using different frameworks and libraries has become increasingly popular amongst developers due to the fact that it allows them to save valuable time and effort on something that has already been done by someone. The same logic goes for user interface requirements during each project, even if the UI characteristics remain the same, different teams tend to re-evaluate these interfaces, often coming up with identical results. This is the reason why there is a need to create a set of user interface requirements that could be used every time a certain standard type of UI is bound to be created. What this project has achieved can be considered as a successful set of requirements in order to provide a better understanding of how to design web prototypes. In a matter of a couple of months we were able to conduct in deep research from different and various sources and to organize the actions of the team members at the same time. We also had to learn how to check our behaviour and progress in order to have better control and to have better direction (Mochal 2015). References 10 Tips for Project Management Prosperity. (n.d.). University Alliance. Retrieved November, 2015, from 10

12 Mochal, T. (n.d.). 10 best practices for successful project management - TechRepublic. Retrieved November, 2015, from 11

13 Appendix 1. Needs analysis Technological performance gap As hardware gets more advanced each year and the web becomes more popular, including sophisticated platforms for developing usable systems, web developers are constantly moving towards focusing on the essence of the solutions such as functionality, rather than small technological details. Therefore, different libraries are being more used. In other words, developers do not have to reinvent the wheel. If someone has already developed a working solution, which on community based open source development gets better each week, there is no need for a developer to write code for simple yet technically complicated functionality, e.g. the number of lines of code needed to make a smooth slider is probably in hundreds of thousands, similar to the number of hours spent on writing it. When using libraries, such code can be easily written with one line of code and one minute of time spent on it, making development quicker, cheaper and more effective. Prospective content of the project A detailed set of requirements for constructing user experience prototypes to evaluate the engagement using different web interfaces. At the end of the project, a list of requirements along with, possibly, a mock up of a prototype exemplifying them would be presented. Requirements Financial Due to the academic character of the project, there is no obvious expressed necessity for sponsors, and the time invested by the students will not be translated into financial statements. In the case of needing a high sum of money (which is not seen by any means necessary in any aspect of the project), authorities of the department of informatics of Tallinn University will be contacted. 12

14 Technologies necessary for running the project. Every member of the time already has a computer for conducting the literature review and the Interactive Laboratory of Tallinn University contains as well many instruments (such as eyetracking technologies) to execute different experiments. The team of students that are part of the group also posses experience in User experience evaluation, user engagement, and information architecture, necessary to finalize the project. Expected performance To determine the success of the project, it would be necessary to put it in the service of web developers, researchers and the public to implement several user experience evaluations. The mock up of the prototype should also work accordingly. SWOT analysis The main strength of the project is the amount of the experience combined of the members of the group in the design of user interfaces. Two of the most important opportunities are the chance to contribute to the advancement of HCI and help classmates and other HCI students to finalize their user experience research projects. However, weaknesses such as the lack of time by some of the group members or threats like the lack of sponsors must be relieved by asking for the help of higher authorities in the department of informatics of Tallinn University. Prospective needs analysis Regarding the technological part, the project for developing specifications for the prototype, the preliminary work needs to analyse what are the actual needs of web developers and decision makers in this area, e.g. what topics in web development process mostly raise conflicts between scope and budget. This should give an answer to what kind of prototype would be most beneficial for the development project community. In the future, the wide selection of different devices should be studied e.g. what type of devices are used mostly for web browsing, especially for web interactions (as the scope must be limited 2 or 3 devices should be chosen for the research). 13

15 In the interest of relating the previous two aspects and start writing requirements, the last phase of specifying the project details is to find the combinations of web interface interactions and devices, which would give a clear set for what prototype to develop and how to develop it. 14