CSCI 588 Project Status Review 17 October 2006

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CSCI 588Project Status Review17 October 2006
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Cover Page

• Team 19
• Joshua Garcia 1287
• Umesh Dangat 0337
• Aditya Devdhar 8062
• On-Campus

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Topic DescriptionMr. Mercury The Mechanic

• The system responds to problems detected by the
  hardware
• Problems include overdue oil changes, flat tire,
  theft, etc.
• Sends notifications
• Recommends solutions
• Recommends when to enact the solutions
• Assumptions The system will not actually detect
  the problem because the hardware performs that
  functionality

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System Requirements

• The system shall notify the user by cell phone,
  PDA and/or PC
• The system shall only run on Windows CE / Windows
  XP
• The system shall not actually detect problems
  because the hardware will perform that
  functionality
• The system shall notify the user of the problem
  detected by the hardware
• The system shall provide appropriate solutions to
  the problem
• The system shall allow the user to enable and
  disable maintenance and repair scheduling
• The system shall provide the user the option to
  select which device the system sends notification
  to
• The system shall maintain a history of problems
  and their solutions
• The system shall allow all resolved problems to
  be deleted
• The system shall allow unresolved problems to be
  accepted and executed or postponed for a later
  resolution

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Navigation Map
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User Analysis Discussion
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User Profile

• User characteristics (who is the user)
• any user who drives a car
• User tasks (what tasks the user performs)
• Settings
• Type of device - Cell phone, PDA, Comp
• Type of problem-Maintenance, Breakdown,
  Vandalism
• Handle notifications
• Resolved
• Unresolved
• User workload
• Critical natured system
• User environment
• Anywhere a user can carry PDA/Cell/Comp

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Dialogue styles selected

• Dialogue Interaction Style Menus Direct
  Manipulation Form Fill in
• Menus
• Intuitively get user input
• Buttons make choices lucid
• Effective screen space utilization
• Direct manipulation
• Use of Calendar to select the day to handle the
  automobile problem.
• Form Fill in
• Enable/disable report of certain problems

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I/O Devices

• Input Devices
• Stylus General Input
• Most popular integrated input device with PDA
• Convenient and easy to use
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Cell phone keys
• Output Device
• PDA High Contrast Screen
• Integrated in the PDA\
• Monitor
• Cell Phone Screen

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Visual Design
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Summary style Guide

• The general look-and-feel of the application
  consists of buttons, forms and tables
• Menus of buttons are placed on the center of the
  screen
• Buttons are placed either entirely on top or
  bottom of the screen
• The title of the screen is found at the top of
  each screen using the same font and color
• Tables follow the general format of grey for the
  headers and blue for the background
• Backgrounds will be consistent with either all
  colored in white or containing the picture of car
  parts

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Icon/Symbols used
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Use of Color/Fonts/Visual Design

• Colors
• We have abided by the Aaron Marcus ten
  commandments for colors in choosing 5/- 2.
• We have used the contrast colors guideline to
  make text more readable.
• Tried to avoid use of bright and high intensity
  colors
• We have used familiar color combinations like red
  for breakdown and theft.
• Fonts
• kept large enough to be legible, we have kept in
  mind the fact that this system can be used on a
  Baby-UI.
• Visual design
• Constant background theme of nuts and bolts, to
  show similarity of design amongst all slides.
• Tables are used extensively to show the various
  features of problems encountered to keep the data
  more organised.

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Home Page

• We chose buttons rather than pull-downs because
  the GUI Design Tips suggest Dont hide functions
  under pull-downs and Use buttons and function
  keys for frequent options. Navigating to
  notifications, in particular, is a frequently
  used options. The Design Tips also mention that
  buttons allow for a larger click area and clearer
  labels. Since our system runs on PDAs and PCs,
  these qualities are desirable.
• As stated in the not-so-good checklist, we
  avoided grey default background by leaving the
  background as a simple white with faded images of
  automobile parts. The automobile parts represent
  the idea of fixing automobiles. We avoided color
  combinations of text and background that make the
  text hard to read by keeping the simple black
  text with white background and faded images.
• To assure the page can fit on a PC, cell phone or
  PDA we sized and positioned the window so that
  the window is useful immediately when opened. We
  achieved this sizing and positioning by keeping
  the window small with just a few buttons and a
  title that has pictures along it.

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Problem Notifications Page
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Problem Notifications Page

• The problem notifications follows closely to the
  home page because it allows further navigation to
  the detailed pages for resolved and unresolved
  problems.
• Buttons are used for frequent options (choosing
  between resolved and unresolved problems) as
  suggested by the GUI design tips.
• The background is carried over as well since the
  page follows the same kind of format. Just like
  the home page, the background aims to convey the
  idea of automobile repair through car parts. It
  avoid being a distracting by making the images
  look lighter and faded and, thus, prevents having
  too many focal points on the page as suggested as
  suggested in the not-so-good checklist.
• To allow navigation back to the main screen a
  hyperlink that uses standard colors for unvisited
  and visited links is used as suggested in Jakob
  Nielsens list.

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Resolved Problems
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Unresolved Problems Page
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Resolved Unresolved Problems

• We used buttons for frequently used options
  again. In this case, the frequently used options
  were viewing problems and their solutions along
  with deleting the problems. Thus, we have a
  button for viewing and a button for deleting. As
  suggested in the GUI design tips, we used
  mouse-oriented widgets to make point-and-click
  selection easier. We used checkboxes to allow
  selection of which problem would be viewed or
  which problems would be deleted.
• We used color to convey meaning for breakdown
  problem types in the table. It is a cultural
  convention that red conveys that a serious error
  has occurred of some sort. In this case, the
  serious error is that something in the users
  automobile has broken down.
• We made the table of problems use up most of the
  screen in order to make it the focal point of the
  page. This avoids the having no focal points or
  too many focal points as suggested in the
  not-so-good checklist.
• To allow backwards navigation, we provided links
  in standard blue for unvisited and purple for
  visited links.

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View Problem

• To contrast problem and solution we show the
  problem on top and outside a visible table, while
  we show the recommended solutions as a table
  below the problems
• The buttons follow the same form as previous
  buttons giving the user a sense of uniformity and
  repetition of function

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Select Date Time
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Select Date Time

• We provide the user a form of direct manipulation
  in the form of a calendar so that s/he can choose
  a day to handle the automobile problem
• The drop-down list prevents the user from
  entering erroneous times
• The drop-down list is set up in a fashion that
  makes use of proper grouping and alignment to
  make the time easily readable and understandable

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Comments/Issues/Complaints/Assumptions

• Tools used
• Microsoft FrontPage
• Microsoft Visio
• Adobe Photoshop
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Lessons learned
• Team dynamics
• Team communication
• Feedback from teaching staff
• Plans for rest of the semester
• Complete the remaining project milestones
• Improve project based on feedback