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Iteration Considerations
Reflections
We all got a great deal of experience with web programming through this project. We learned how to html, css, and jquery effectively and how to debug the problems we had. One consistent challenge that we ran into was clashes of external libraries. We learned to be very careful of external libraries especially when trying to mix them together. In addition, it would have been nice to receive some guidance on how to organize our files. For all of us, almost the entire code for a page was on one file or split into the html file and .js file. It would have been nice to know how UI programmers break up their coding process. Also, Sumit learned that linear algebra comes in handy when working with movable, zoomable maps.
One thing we wish we had done earlier on is narrowed the scope of our project. Originally, we were too ambitious. As a result, when interviewing our user group to discover their needs, we were not able to dial in on a single problem and really understand it. We found during our last round of user testing that users tend to assume a room centric model different from our task centric model. Perhaps we would have realized this earlier on with a narrower scope.
We also learned a lot about the UI design process. We truly came to appreciate the paper model after realizing how long it took to make the computer prototype. Looking back, we think it might have been helpful to improve the feel of the paper prototype if we had used the whiteboard paper so that users could write and erase things easier. Also, it might have been useful to have two paper prototypes to compare side by side. Of course, this would have taken too much time which was not available during the semester. Finally, we learned about the importance about briefing our test users effectively. We found that throwing our users into the interface without giving a tutorial taught us a lot about learnability. However, our interface would not have many new users all the time so our time would have been better spent examining other usability aspects instead such as efficiency.