Problem Scenarios and
Claims
Objectives:
Overview:
The group projects for this semester involve designing and developing novel notification systems for large screen displays for showing news related content. In the requirements phase, your main goal is to develop a shared understanding (i.e., as a group) of the needs, concerns, and opportunities reflected in your users' current activities. You will synthesize and present this understanding in a description of the stakeholders and their tasks, as well as a set of problem scenarios and claims. You need to identify potential users to glean requirements from for your project and convince potential customers that their interests will be seriously considered and addressed in the project.
What to do:
1. Organize and assign roles:
This will be the first time your group has worked together, so you will need to investigate one another's skills, interests, schedules, etc. You may decide that individuals will take on different roles for this project. Possibilities include meeting scheduler, interviewer, note taker, scenario writer, claims analyst, technical writer, editor and/or proof reader. Note that although specific tasks may become the prime responsibility of one or more members, all members should be familiar with all of the activities that take place...i.e., stay in touch with each other, use status reports.
2. Brainstorm a root concept, develop field study plan:
Your first job will be develop a root concept as described in Chapter 2. This will have a strong influence on the remainder of the project, so think carefully about this. Based on the root concept, you should then develop a field study plan, including a plan for field visits to your users, artifacts you expect to collect, a guide for asking questions of users, the roles each of you will take on, and so on.
3. Collect data from your users:
4. Summarize your field data:
· Write a description of the stakeholders for your project. List each stakeholder group that you have identified and summarize their responsibilities, their relationships to other stakeholder groups, and their technology background. This can be done in a table format.
· Develop two different hypothetical stakeholders that you will use as actors in your scenarios.
5. Synthesize problem scenarios and claims:
Using your observations, interviews, collected artifacts, and summary analyses as source material, develop four problem scenarios, two for each of the actors described as hypothetical stakeholders. Each scenario should have a brief but evocative name. These scenarios should have a realistic feel to them (i.e., they should be believable), but need not be based on actual episodes observed or described to you. The point is to write scenarios that best convey what you have learned about the current situation. Remember that it is OK (often essential) to include multiple actors in a scenario, but the story is told from one actor's perspective. Remember also that these are problem scenarios, so they should have nothing to do with any tool or environment you think you might design in the project.
Analyze 1-2 claims for each scenario. As discussed in Chapter 2, a claim may
express issues associated with multiple scenarios. This is fine -- again, the
point is to document what you think are the most interesting or critical
features of the current situation, along with your analysis of these features'
upsides and downsides. Indicate with underline, font color, or other text
formatting the piece of the narrative that gave rise to each claim. Each claim
included should have at least one positive consequence and one negative
consequence. Use the VSF examples of scenarios and claims in the book and those
in the case study library
6. Prepare your phase 1 report:
The phase 1 reports should have the following labeled sections. Number all pages that follow the Table of Contents to make the report easier to browse and review.
1. Cover Sheet: label the phase as "Requirements Analysis", and include group number, team member names and student numbers, and due date
2. Table of Contents: list page numbers for each required element
3. Overview: a 1-2 page introduction to this phase, introducing your users, summarizing the requirements analysis process, and previewing the online tools/environment you will be designing in the next phase.
4. Preparing for the Field Study: the root concept, interview guide(s), as well as any other documents produced in planning the field work
5. Field Data: notes from your interviews, photographs or other artifacts collected as part of the field work
6. Field Data Summaries: stakeholder descriptions, artifact descriptions (refer back as necessary to the actual artifacts in the previous section), hypothetical stakeholders
7. Problem Scenarios and Claims: the four scenarios. Each scenario should be given an evocative name. The claim(s) analyzed for each scenario should follow the scenario, i.e. resulting in an interleaved ordering of scenario/claim(s).
8. Bibliography: cite any sources (printed matter or the Web) you used in preparing your analysis. Make sure you mention any of the cases we have talked about up to this point if you base any of your ideas on what you have seen in them.
You can send these reports to the GTA (ppyla@vt.edu
Grading:
Overview: 20%
(#3)
Field Study Intro: 10% (#4)
Field Study Data & Summaries: 40% (#5 & 6)
Problem Scenarios & Claims: 20% (#7)
General Composition: 10% (all numbers)