Status Update - Aug 21, 2008

Created by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Oct 06, 2008Version comment
3 min read

Last week we had an open call to discuss implementing the UX screens that came out of the first UX Improvement design project.

This Wednesday a small but eager team came together in a kick-off meeting / working session aimed at implementing the screens.

People on the call (many of whom comprise the working team) include:

  • Michelle Wagner, Chen Wen, and Lance Speelmon from Indiana
  • Gonzalo Silverio and Zhen Qian from U of M
  • Nicolaas Matthijs and John Norman from Cambridge
  • Oliver Heyer from Berkeley
  • And yours truly, Nathan Pearson

The meeting lasted an hour and concluded with the team picking different areas of interest to work on:

  • Michelle and Chen will be looking into the Edit Preferences screens.
  • Gonzalo and Zhen will focus their attention on the Create a Site screens.
  • Nico will do his part by bringing everyone up to speed on development methods, working through various framework issues, and ultimately finishing up the Add Tools screens that were started in the hackathon.
  • Oliver was on the call to evaluate the project and consider lending a hand with PM support.
  • My job is to service these guys in any way I can, whether that's helping with PM or working through design changes as needed.

Things that should currently be underway and/or are next steps:

  • Michelle, Chen, Gonzalo, and Zhen are studying the screens and going over the dev documentation Nico has provided on confluence. Hopefully they're also setting up an environment and doing a bit of tinkering.
  • Nico is working on various framework issues and coordinating with others to align development processes. See below.
  • Oliver and I should probably chat sometime soon to discuss his plans.
  • I will be reaching out individually to each team member to schedule a time for us to review each screen in detail, much the same way Nico and I did earlier, and shape up some time estimates which will feed into a larger project schedule. Also, I'll be using those discussions to prioritize which screens I'll need to get crack'n on.

Nico has posted the following questions to the team:

Team: please use the confluence comments to reply, or send an email to Nico directly, or use the UX list.

  • Has everyone seen MyCamTools yet and the development approach it uses ? (JSON datafeeds on the backend, that are being used by a HTML/CSS/JavaScript front-end
  • How does everyone feel about this development approach?
  • How does everyone prefer to create datafeeds? (sdata, entitybroker, ...? )
  • How does everyone want to get started? (short technical meeting, find out themselves with me for consultancy, look at code first, which documentation is needed...)
  • How would folks like to team up? Who prefers doing front-end and who prefers doing back-end?
  • What is everyone's commitment to this project?

Areas that still need attention include:

  • We could also use volunteers who are interested and able to commit to PM'ng this project.

A few side notes:

  • This status update was sent to both the UX and Dev lists, but all future updates will only be sent to the UX list, so if you're interested, make sure you're on that list.
  • The team working on this project should use the UX list as the main communication channel. If the list gets too busy, we'll get our own list together - so please let us know if we become disruptive.
  • I will make every effort to post a weekly status update (likely toward the end of each week, but that may change).