Design of a User-Friendly System for Tracking Employee Vacation Time

Team Members

• Joel Clawson (Joel.Clawson@colorado.edu)
  
• Genevieve Hudak (Genevieve.Hudak@colorado.edu)
  
• Brock LaMeres (brock_lameres@agilent.com)
• Kitty Turner (kittyturner@qwest.net)

• Email the Team

Research Area:

• Design

Research Proposal:

• This project is an extension of our independent research on user-friendly designs. We are going to apply the principles learned in Norman's book "Design of Everday Things" to the design of a web-based ssystem that tracks employee's where-abouts (i.e., in/out of the office, on vacation, sick, etc...). This system will be designed such that users can enter there information and recieve a graphical representation of the entire office's status.

Progress Reports

• Design Project Initial Idea (2/23/04)
  
• Design Project Proposal (3/8/04)
  
• Design Project Progress Report (due 3/31/04)
  
• Design Project Final Report (due 5/3/04)
  

Schedule

• Due Date:
• 2/23/04 : Initial Concepts Due
• 3/01/04 : Project Proposal Due
• 3/08/04 : Creation of End-User Survey, Hand out Survey
• 3/15/04 : Finalize Design Strategy/Architecture
• 3/22/04 : End-User Survey Complete
• 3/29/04 : 1st Proto of System Complete (can be paper only)
• 3/31/04 : Progress Report Due
• 4/05/04 : Complete 1st Round of End-User Testing, 2nd Survey
• 4/12/04 : Revise System per Feedback from Testing
• 4/19/04 : Continue Revising System
• 4/26/04 : Final System Design Compete, Begin working on presentation
• 5/03/04 : Presentation in Class

Project Files

• Design of Tracking System: design_sem_project/Design_Project.ppt+
  
• Initial Survey design_sem_project/Initial_Survey.doc+
  

Distribution of Tasks (in progress)

• Architecting the System.
  

• Survey
  
• Architecting System
  
• Developing the System (more to come)
  

• Architecting System
  
• Developing the System (more to come)
  

• Architecting System
  
• Developing the System (more to come)
  

• Architecting System
  
• Developing the System (more to come)
  

Meeting Notes

• Location: Online
• We have decided to use the same team as our independent research project. We want to apply the principles we learned in the book "Design of Everyday Things" to an actual design. Joel has an idea about a vacation tracking web page that allows users to enter when they are going to be out of the office and then displays it in a calender format. They use a system like this at his job at JOSS but it is a static HTML site and when it is altered, the physical HTML is changed. We could create an advanced system that allows dynamic entries and dynamic creation of the display pages.

• Location: Before DLC Class, ITTL, 4:45pm
• We saw the current system at Joel's work which is a static webpage. We agree that we can design a system from scratch that will accomplish the task of tracking vacation time. We believe that between cgi and java-script, we have the tools to accomplish the task. Our system will us fields and forms to enter data display is a graphical manner the net data. The forms and menu's will follow the principles of user-friendly design.
  
• Brock, Kitty, and Gen are unavailable to write the project proposal. Joel as volunteered to own the writing and posting to the swiki on March 8th.

• Location: Bobas Tea place, Folsom and Canyon, 11:00am
• We have agreed on a Survey for the user's at Joel's work to complete. The questions will address what they need out of the system and how they feel the best way that the system should operate. We encourage the users to reference other software programs so that we have a frame of reference.
• We are getting closer on an architecture. The two possible choices are a CGI based system written in Perl. This system dynamically creates the webpages. It stores information in text files. The second system is JavaScript based. This system lends itself well to forms, fields, and pop-up windows. It doesn't address the issue of dynamically creating the webpages or how to store data.
• Action Items for next week. We are going to research similar systems and try to put together a block-diagram of the design of our system.

• Location: Before DLC Class, ITTL, 4:45pm
• Next Meeting...