DECO3500 SEMESTER 2 2017
Krista Harrison, Bethany Cave, Lachlan Healey
The project our team will be developing is UQ ClubHub - a centralized management and communications platform for clubs and societies operating within The University of Queensland. This project fits within the problem domain of active communities, and is being developed as a social technology which aims to overcome the limitations of current systems employed by clubs at the University, whereby there is no central repository for information, and each club utilises their own choice of methods for management, member communication, and event organisation.
Our idea is to develop an application which allows for one-stop management and interaction with clubs and societies at The University of Queensland. Currently, each club within the University utilises their own choice of software and communication methods for arranging club events, membership, communication and management. There is also very limited space for finding out which clubs are operating within the University - the current method is an alphabetised list on the UQ Union website, which cannot be filtered or searched through by category or area of interest.
A requirements gathering survey conducted by our team discovered that Facebook (97.8%), Slack (28.9%), and Email/Mailing Lists (55.6%) were the primary methods of communication used by clubs. The effectiveness of using these methods for the majority of club operations is in question, with 48.9% of respondents stating they had missed out on information about a club with these methods being used; and 28.9% having missed out on a event because they do not use the primary form of communication adopted by the club (e.g. the member does not have Facebook, and the club primarily communicates through a Facebook group).
A common theme within responses from club executives was that utilising platforms such as Facebook to communicate with their members was becoming problematic, as the reach of their posts is continually decreasing. Another problem mentioned was that Facebook is considered an informal response platform, and gauging attendance numbers for events is unreliable at best.
Our solution is an application which will create an in-situ community (within The University of Queensland) which will coordinate membership, information, and management. The proposed features are as follows:
- Browse clubs (search for particular clubs/type of club)
- Join a club (each club would have something similar to a Slack server)
- Allow membership payments
- Event notifications/calendar/feed (for clubs the user is a member of)
- Custom Permissions - Member/Public/Executive/Admin (for UQ Union)
- BBQ roster (Would be located within Executive area)
- Create events (For executives - or anyone they grant permissions to)
The application will fit within the broader context of social technology. It will facilitate communication between individuals and groups, along with facilitating human in-person interaction (for example through the provisions for organising events). Clubs and societies within UQ are already a hugely social group, however the application will aim to overcome the shortcomings of the current systems which are excluding certain groups of people from engagement with these clubs and societies. It will allow members, executives, and UQ Union staff to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate by bringing new social technology to the existing operations of these clubs. Ideally, it will take the benefits of platforms currently in use, such as the collaborative nature of platforms such as Google Drive, the communicative nature of Slack, and the egocentric nature of Facebook; and combine these into one purpose built solution.
Krista Harrison
Course Code: DECO3500
Bachelor of Multimedia Design
Student Number: 43206452
A third year Bachelor of Multimedia Design student, with professional experience in website design/development, and graphic design; as well as a keen interest in user experience design and research. Proficient knowledge in HTML, CSS and JavaScript; with some experience using Python, Java, ActionScript, PHP and SQL. Krista is also adept at using many Adobe Creative Suite applications, particularly Illustrator.
Bethany Cave
Course Code: DECO3500
Bachelor of Science/Arts
Student Number: 43549524
A fourth year computer science student, with experience in Java, C#, C++, Python, HTML, CSS3, Javascript, Linux, Windows, and Unity (among other platforms and languages). Interested in UX design and requirements gathering, as well as testing and validation.
Lachlan Healey
Course Code: DECO3500
Bachelor of Engineering
Student Number: 42579328
A sixth year software engineering student with extensive experience in Java and Python. Interested in backend development, and is scared of UI design and implementation.
Krista Harrison:
- Team Leader
- Interface Design
- User-Testing
- Front end development
Bethany Cave:
- Testing and validation
- Requirements gathering
- User recruitment
- Support for back end developer
- Support for front end developer
Lachlan Healey:
- Back end design and implementation
- Database management
The team will meet weekly in their enrolled workshop session for DECO3500 (12pm-2pm Tuesday). Meetings outside of this will be arranged as needed, and agreed upon in advance by all team members. At least 24 hours notice must be given to all team members when arranging an additional meeting.
Team members are expected to attend the weekly meetings. They will also be expected to read group communication on a daily basis. Team members will need to give 24 hours notice if they are unable to attend a meeting, unless extenuating circumstances, such as a medical situation or family emergency, are present.
Files are to be stored and shared within a Google Drive folder, and files are to be named in accordance with which piece of assessment they are related to. Files for each assessment item should be stored within the folder of that item.
Team communication is to occur through a private Slack channel, within the Social and Mobile Computing Slack. This platform has been chosen for team communication due to its ease of fitting in with existing course communication methods for the broader cohort.
The team will follow a consensus decision making process as illustrated in Fig. 1. Any group member has the right to block a proposed action, but is encouraged to first discuss alternatives with the aim of coming to a consensus agreement. If progress on the project is stalled due to excessive blocking of decisions, then the dispute resolution process (3.5) will be followed.
If necessary, the group has proposed a conflict management plan:
When a team member demonstrates a non-compliance action (not attending a meeting, not completing tasks on time, not responding to team communication), the first step will be to talk to the team member about this during the next team meeting. If the team member or members demonstrate actions outlined in point 1 a second time, a formal discussion during the next team meeting will be held to determine any penalty that may arise from these actions. This may involve making the team member complete their work during the team meeting and reminding them of the consequences for the next non-compliance action. If the team member continues to exhibit non-compliance a third time, the issue will be escalated and brought to the course tutors/lecturer for further judgement. Possible peer assessment will also be discussed.
- As we’re going to be following a continuous integration agile approach, it is difficult to layout concrete milestones of content, as deliverables will likely change in response to user feedback. *
Timeframe: This will be occurring from week 3 to week 6.
Plan: We will be doing a user survey to gather feedback on how students currently interact with clubs, as well as how clubs’ executive communicate and organise events for their members.
Key Deliverables: From our survey we will be producing a summary of requirements which will document what our surveyed users and executives have indicated as key requirements for the ClubHub system.
Timeframe: This will be occurring from week 5 to week 7.
Plan: We will be deciding on a list of features and functionality that will form the core of ClubHub. This will include, among other things (to be decided), a user logging in, browsing clubs, viewing club information, and joining a club.
Key Deliverables: The deliverable here will be in the format of a site map, list and explanation of RESTful endpoints, and their usage, and a database schema.
Timeframe: This will be occurring from week 7 to week 10.
Plan: To implement the features decided upon in the Initial Design phase.
Key Deliverables: A site in which a user can register, login, view and search clubs in a list, as well as join clubs.
Timeframe: This will be beginning in week 10 and culminating in week 13 with featured being delivered throughout.
Plan: To expand on the core functionality,in accordance with user's’ needs. The order we do things will be guided by responses from our continuous user testing.
Key Deliverables: We will be expanding on the core functionality, adding support for club executives to create events for their clubs, edit club information, adding per club chat rooms, as well as private messaging between users. Adding club discovery portal for new members to enter their interests and be suggested clubs.
Timeframe: This will be done continuously throughout the project.
Plan: Every update to the system will be manually (or autonomously) tested to ensure functionality, as well as fully user tested to ensure that development remains aligned with user goals.
Key Deliverables: Throughout the project a major part of Beth’s role will be continuous testing of the system, ensuring that it is fit-for-purpose and intuitive for users. These testing iterations will be documented and conclusions used to guide further development.
The resources that the team anticipates the need for are:
- Channel of communication with UQ club executives and UQU Campus Culture VPs for user acceptance testing and ongoing requirements gathering
- UQ club members for user testing
- Regular access to a space in which to conduct user tests
- Web domain to host prototype
- Server space to host website and backend.
- #CSCW
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- #students
- #community