Usability Testing

Mock-ups of Tutorial

Our professor wanted us to emphasis certain Java topics we learned in class as we created our Java Tutorial. With that in mind, we knew we had to include 2D Graphics, Java Beans, Cryptography, Security, etc.

Together we decided to emphasize coding structure, provide animations, and plain text to teach lessons. Pictured below are two of our mock-ups. We decided to go with the later.

Figure 1: Mock-up Image 1

Figure 2: Mock up Image 2

As you can see Figure 1, had the sample code text pane sharing a panel with the Animation Panel. In figure 2, the sample code text pane is located near the lesson/question panel.

Design of Product

Once we determined our brand, we were sent off with the task of determining what kind of product we wanted to present. With both primary and secondary research, and understanding the scope of the project we determined we wanted to highlight the following topics in our tutorial:

Logic

• If/Else
• Switch

Loops

• For
• While/Do While

Collections

• Array
• ArrayList

Objects

• Constructors
• Accessors and Mutators
  

Creation of Brand and Logo

Through several heated meetings and mock-ups my team finally decided on a logo, and how we wanted to brand ourselves. We wanted our audience to see that we were cohesive, research forward, diverse and a talented programming team. Together we agreed on the name Connect4.
We used analogies and symbols commonly seen in the game Connect Four produced by Hasbro. Our final design came out as follows:

Determination of Project Topics

Once assigned to our groups in Team-Based Application Programming we were given the task of researching what key concepts new programmers had a hard time understanding. Stated below is an excerpt from our paper describing our major research method:

During a regularly scheduled Java programming class, students were split into groups of two and three, and assigned an interviewer. Students were varied in ages, and provided many explanations on why they were taking this course. As it is a required course for the Information Technology (IT) and Network Security and System Administration (NSSA) degrees, students found in this class were either taking the course for the first time, retaking the course, transferred into Rochester Institute of Technology, or taking the course after failed attempts at taking a higher Java programming course. Attending this class session provided us with a diverse pool of responses.

Our group interviewed a total of nine students. It was our aim to make the students feel comfortable by building a repertoire in order for them to provide useful and honest responses. At the end of the day, our team came together and reported our findings, in addition to articles with relevant topics in order to further understand college-wide programming issues.

Group Dynamics

After talking to each of my group members we all came to the realization that our dynamics were of the following characteristic.

Diya - Designer, Programmer, HCI, Lead Researcher

Derek - Lead Designer, Programmer, HCI, Researcher

Jeff - Programmer, Motivator, HCI, 2nd Lead Researcher

Shawn - Lead Programmer, HCI, Researcher

Connect4

During my senior year at RIT I decided to take the class, Team-Based Application Development. The class provided me the opportunity to link with other IT students and learn additional topics concerning Java. Being that this was an upper level course, a lot of the topics were self taught. Some of the Java topics we taught ourselves are: 2dgraphics, animation, java beans, gui's, cryptography, security. We also learned how to performance tune our programs and CVS. Once these topics were mastered, we were grouped into teams of four in order to create a Java Tutorial for lower level Java programming students.

My teams name was connect4, and with our diversity, respect for one another, and cohesive nature we were able to produce a logo, tutorial program, design document, and a technical report.

I have decided to use this space to touch on the various parts of our project, and several other projects to come. I will include images, and hopefully have the tutorial available to view.