ICS 463: Intro to Human-Computer Interaction Design, Spring 2006

Assignment 5: Project and Requirements Planning (due 2/28)

Objective

to clarify the objectives of the project, the assumptions behind it, who's involved, and the timeline. You'll do so by preparing a document that follows the outline below.
To prepare for data gathering and requirements analysis.
To become familiar with data gathering and requirements analysis methods.

What you do

There are actually three parts:

Project concept or "root concept"
Roles and timeline
Requirements gathering plan

Each is described below, followed by a suggestion concerning how to organize them on the web.

Project Concept

Make a document that captures the key concepts of your project, following the outline below. It is critical that all team members agree on the content of this document: negotiate until you do. Subsequently you will discuss the contents of this document with your stakeholders, and possibly revise it.

Project Name: name of project here

High Level Vision:

What are we trying to achieve?

Write a phrase or sentence here that captures the objective of the project in terms of the application domain. Don't describe how you will achieve that objective, such as what technology you will use. Don’t use geek talk. Instead, describe an objective that your customers would understand and get excited about.

Rationale:

Why will technology (our future system) help?

Here (not in the previous item) you can say why you think a technology solution is appropriate.

Stakeholders:

Who has a vested interest?

List and describe stakeholders here. Include everyone who might be affected by and therefore be motivated to contribute to the design, not just end users.

Starting Assumptions and Constraints:

What decisions have we already made? What requirements have been imposed from outside?

List and describe here. Stick to the essentials. Constraints are things you cannot change. Assumptions could be challenged but are ideas you are very sure of.

Work Plan

This addresses the pragmatics of getting the project done this semester. Write up a brief plan that includes the following parts:

Objectives for ICS463 Pilot Project

Recognizing that you may not be able to achieve the overall objectives of the project in the remainder of the semester, please indicate how the scope of your objectives will be limited for the purposes of this semester project.

Roles

Describe who does what on this project, and how they interact to coordinate efforts. Don't make the mistake of having each person go off and work alone for a long time! You must have a good coordination plan.

Timeline

I have already laid out the basic timeline in terms of the upcoming assignments. You are constrained to follow this timeline, but here you should elaborate on how you will meet the timeline.

Requirements Data Gathering

The assignment requirements differ depending on how many people are in your group. More people means more work can be done, but it is not a linear relationship due to the communication costs involved.

Examining your Root Concept document, as a group, think of and write down information you would need before beginning to design your product. Here are some questions to get you started:
- Making sure that your starting point is right. Do you stakeholders agree with your vision statement, rationale for using technology, and lists of assumptions and constraints? How these might be expanded with further information from stakeholders?
- Taking the next step towards requirements. What would you need to know in order to write data, functional, environmental, user and usability requirements?
Based on the information needs identified above, choose and prepare for the data gathering activities that best suit your project. Choose from the following list:
- Documentation or Artifact Analysis
- Product Analysis
- Focus Group
- Interviews (use the Interview Guide)
- Naturalistic Observation
- Questionnare or Survey (you must pilot test and have me approve it before sending it out)
Projects of 1 person should undertake at least two of these data gathering methods, and projects of two or more should do at least three of these methods.

Write up a requirements gathering plan based on the above. Document your plans for gathering data.
- Say what data gathering methods you chose from the above list and why you chose them.
- Say who will gather the data and how it will be gathered. Provide supporting materials, such as your interview or focus group plan (open ended and specific questions) if interviewing, and the questionnaire instrument if you chose to do one of those. If you will be doing naturalistic observations, indicate where, when and how the observations will be done and how information is recorded.
- Summarize how will the data be analyzed.
- Provide a timeline for doing this work (due 3/14).

NOTE: In keeping with the Writing Intensive designation of this course and your future as a practitioner, this data gathering plan should be presented in a professional manner, as if you were preparing documentation for management and for colleagues who will be helping with the data gathering.

What To Turn In

Obviously the project assignments are more complex than what has gone before. We need a way to organize multiple doucments. Your group should design a project web site with an entry page and navigation facilities, containing each of the above three parts, under links "Project Concept," "Work Plan," and "Requirements Planning."

Please do not use frames: you will be adding other pages to this web site in future assignments, and we want to be able to address each page via its own URL from disCourse.

Then submit the URL for the project home page to disCourse as your assignment. In our discussion of your project, we can change the URL of our messages to the part we are talking about.

This is your first group assignment, so you need to know that the first person in your group to turn in the assignment will be turning it in for the whole group: no one else need turn it in.

Once your project has turned in its plans, each of you should examine and comment on the plans turned in by projects before you.