FindingFive
'Study Store' for buying and selling pre-built study templates
GOALS
Create a “Study Store” which will facilitate the buying and selling of pre-built research study templates
ROLE
User Research, UX/UI Design, GUI Development, GUI Team Lead
TARGET AUDIENCE
Behavioral researchers and students
OVERVIEW
FindingFive is a charitable non-profit organization that is developing a web-based platform to simplify the creation of browser-based experimental studies for behavioral researchers using JSON “study templates”. FindingFive aims to provide the technological infrastructure to allow behavioral researchers to conduct their research over the Internet without the significant demands of setting up online experiments.
PROBLEM
FindingFive translates internal JSON objects into web apps (“study templates”) via HTML5 and JavaScript for behavioral researchers who are not familiar with this programming process. There are some drawbacks to this approach.
- It still takes a while for a researcher to build and program their studies before they can even begin any actual research
- System is missing a way to host, manage, and sell study templates
- It does not really supply a steady stream of revenue for FindingFive
OUR TASK
Develop a system that will host, sell, and deliver these JSON study templates to authorized FindingFive users only
- This system will provide users a way to acquire, download, and submit these pre-built study templates from/into a central repository
EXPECTED CAPABILITIES
- Host study templates
- Search study templates by keyword and/or category
- Preview selected study templates
- Purchase study templates
- Publish/Upload study templates
- Save study templates via wishlist
- View purchase/preview historic data
IDEATION & SKETCHING
Initial sketches and wireframes helped us with thinking about the layout of the product and help us to fine-tune all the features.
DESIGN SYSTEM
The pace of delivery on the project was helped massively by our design system.
PROTOTYPE
Once all teams were on board with how it would work, we moved onto high fidelity designs. Again, building out into a prototype really helped with the user flow.
DEVELOPMENT
Our team provided a GitHub repository with full HTML, CSS & jQuery files and ensured that the app was built to exact UI specifications.
- I worked with the development team and offered overall support through deployment.
THE TEAM
From the very start, it was important to me that our GUI team be built out in a way that would empower everyone to do their best work, to feel secure and fulfilled, and to have pride in what we were setting out to accomplish. They’re not “resources”, they’re humans! Inclusion is something I personally feel very strongly about, and I wanted the team to reflect that in the structure that we offered, as well as the flexibility. Here are just some of the ways that we made that happen:
- Product Development team meetings three times a week
- Clear division of responsibility
- Weekly retrospectives with action items
- Agile sprint planning sessions
- Clear procedures including design system, prioritization framework, & Definition of Done
- Flexible working and scheduling
TESTING
We tested the quality of our system as follows:
- Quality Assurance Testing
- Control Flow Graph Testing (Loop, Branch, Path)
- Equivalence Class Testing
- Data Flow Testing (C-Use, P-Use, All-Use Criterion)
- Unit Testing (PyUnit, QUnit)
- Usability Analysis of the live Study Store
- Security Assessment
FINDINGS
We have determined that the system we have developed is of sound quality; user friendly; and reasonably and technically secure.
REFLECTION
Working on something you are not familiar with is never easy. Team lead role was quite challenging for me since I'm from a design background. But the training and studying through HCI program has strengthened my ability to analyze and translate user problems and requirements into tasks. Being a team lead also improved a lot on my soft skills like communication. I was under a lot of pressure for the first few times when I have to give a presentation or actual meeting, to pitch the new feature idea. Luckily, through these presentations, I could manage my ideas and expressions much more clear and logical way than before.
