The Friendly Project
A. Van Ee · Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) · 2009
The first assignment of this bachelorproject was to enhance the user experience of the Test Zone on www.gmat-zone.com. This web application helps users practice tests before taking the GMAT. This project required that research was done about the usability of the system using several techniques. First, an online questionnaire was sent to students of the Rotterdam School of Management asking them to participate. They were asked to look at the Test Zone and share their thoughts by answering the questions in the questionnaire. Only one person filled in half of the questionnaire. A paper-based version was handed out to people who attended the GMAT training courses at Collins Kumarasinghe Associates and who had worked with the application before. Hardly anyone had used the application because they had just started studying for the GMAT. Most people started practicing with the application after they had finished the courses. The paper-based questionnaire was not a success either. Since most people attending the courses would be using the application later, they were perfect users for the think-aloud protocol. This technique is used to identify any usability problems by letting users, who have never used the application before, play around with the system and talk about what they are thinking. This makes it possible to identify what people do not understand and what parts of the application are unclear. This technique proved very effective and a lot of data was gathered from multiple sessions with different users. Most problems found using the think-aloud protocol were easily fixed. Most functionality was already available in the application but users had trouble finding it. Some pages were renamed and some bugs were fixed. Some new functionality was proposed during the second research phase. This involved adding a progress bar to show users how much time they were spending on each question, the possibility to rate and flag questions while taking the tests and being able to send questions to the trainers through the website. Users were also asked about the new functionality and they thought that each extra function was a good idea. These functions were also implemented and tested, and did not show any other major problems with the application. The second assignment was to gather the requirements for a car parts website, www.parts.sg, and implementing a part of the website. This assignment was not the project described in the Orientation Report. At first the assignment was to create an environment in which the web developer at Collins Kumarasinghe Associates could program websites easily and quickly. Research was done to see if another framework could support the company in a more efficient way. Collins Kumarasinghe Associates use Joomla to create websites. The project changed when the car parts website was ordered by the new clients. This was during the research phase and the idea became to pick a framework that would fit this project. This framework ended up being Drupal. Drupal is a good framework to help create community based websites. It is possible to create many different types of users with different permissions. This was exactly what was needed for the car parts website. Normal users are allowed to view and edit content such as parts or car brand descriptions and these users can also offer used parts for sell. Workshops are allowed to sell new parts and offer services. Workshops are run by other types of users, namely Workshop Moderators and Mechanics. They have other permissions than users who are not part of a Workshop. To gather the requirements for the website, multiple meetings were held with the clients. First, use cases and UML diagrams were created after meeting the clients for the first time. This highlighted what parts of the system were still unclear. After the second meeting, a PowerPoint presentation was made. This functioned as the prototype of the website and it contained almost all the functionality that would be found in the final version of the car parts website. This prototype proved to be very useful. The clients were happy to see the project taking shape and the prototype made it easy to discuss the different functions and to find missing functions. The prototype was also used to explain the website to the other developer. After the prototype was revised a couple of times, it was approved by the clients. After that the UML class diagram was finished and a functionality matrix was created. A Gantt chart was made to plan the implementation phase of the website. To implement the website, it was decided to use custom and existing modules. Modules add certain functionality to the web application. Many useful existing modules were found but the other programmer had a preference for his own modules. This meant that he decided to code a lot of modules himself even though existing modules could create the same functionality. One existing module called Modr8 contained some useful features for the Moderator function. Code was added to this module to adhere to the specifications of the Moderator. A rating system and personal messaging system were both implemented using existing modules. Other functionality was built using a combination of different modules or custom modules.