INFO 440 - L06 - October 19, 2004 - "Requirements" Notes by: Egaas, Fortier, Princess, Yaptinchay Quiz Study Questions Rosson and Carroll Ch 1 • What does scenario-based design mean? • What’s the point of scenario-based design? • What is the waterfall model? How is it different than scenario-based design? • How does design fit into an overall info systems project? Rosson and Carroll Ch 2 • What is a stakeholder and what do they have to do with your design? -- Stakeholders are people that have something to do with the final say of the project, for instance, the users, funders, the design team, the client company. • What is tacit knowledge and how does it affect the design process? What is a requirement? > Not necessarily synonymous to "user need" > A must or should > A feature/function > A constraint - engineering angle - conforming to certain rules i.e. - accounting regulations - forcing you into a specific solution > A given - Something that you just take for granted - assumptions > An obligation How do you get requirements? > Ask for them - Normally does not get good answers back > Find them out from: - What people do (work practices) * to develop hierarchical task analysis * gather requirements by watching - What people have said (artifacts) - Stakeholder design sessions (Today's Focus) What people do: Analyzing Work Practies: [Plan Schedule For Next Quarter] _____________________________|_________________________ | | | [Review Courses Offered] [Review Grad Requirements] [Register] |________________________________________________________ | | | | [Final Course Page] [ Mull ] [Schedule Potentials] [Choose between conflicting] __________|_____________________________ | | | [Research Teacher] [Research Subject] [Research Course] Can people tell you what they know or do? The vast majority of what we know is tacit knowledge > How does tacit knowledge affect the design process? > Tough to get tacit knowledge out of people > Deduce what people want instead of asking them sometimes > What is it? - What you know but can't say - What you do but don't think about - Tribal Knowledge - Habit - Reflex > So... - Listen but watch as well - Try before you finalize - Work with newbies' and 0|d |-|4>< What people have said: analyzing artifacts > Artifacts: Some objects created by people that they left behind from which meaning can be discerned. - ex. files and directories (and how by just looking at those you can learn about that person's life) - ex. iSchool webpage, also of files and directories (organized in a way that they want it to be *viewed*) * Names are less important on the web as opposed to on the MAC - ex. physical stack of paper files _________________________________________ | Student Services Properties ? X | |_______________________________________| | Billy Gates Windows XP COLL STUFF | | Name: [ Student Services ] | | Type: Folder | | Location: N:\Administration Folders | | Size: 4.91 GB | | | | Contains: 5783 Files, 675 Folders | | | | Attributes: [x] Archive | | [ ] Hidden | | | | [ OK ][ Cancel ]< apply >< Help > | |_______________________________________| yay! I'm short and enticed by short people's information about how short they are! (this would be a good mad lib... but I'd pick short every time). you need a new adjective. ok.small. Ok, this is intense... _________________________ |_@_____________________| | | | | | iSchool Web page | | | | | | 0 | | | \|/ | | | | | | | / \ | |___|___________________| we need real text.... Stakeholder Design Session > Why? - To get input - To get buy-in - To get requirements > Can include - Participatory analysis - Interviews - One-on-one meetings - Group meetings (in lab) - Collaboration sessions (Joint Application Development) SubEthaEdit!! - Diagrams and flows What's a Stakeholder? > Always have a “stake” > Sometimes have direct control > Sometimes can veto > May be in or out of your league - ex. "oh wow there's someone famous in my session! o_O", must remember still a user > Have their own agenda > May have a history - We did this a year ago and it was terrible. Know if these people are in the room when you move forward. > May have relationships between them Stakeholders and design: Can people tell you what you want to know? > Not usually > Stakeholders... - Give opinions rather than facts - Give conclusions rather than questions - Are not exhaustive - Are not relevant - Disagree with themselves and each other IT IS UP TO YOU TO MAKE SENSE! Be able to pull it out yourself. Stakeholders and design: What you can and should do > They want to: - Tell you what to do if they've had prior experience/know lingo - Give random micro instructions ex. "Why aren't we like Google?" - Short circuit the process > You must - Understand them - Serve them - Synthesize their input (analyze and put them all together) - Answer to them - Manage them > You can - Profile them * What is their agenda, history, past knowledge? - Work with them “off-line” - Lead and inspire them - Get them to agree Stakeholders and design: How to get to what you need > Ask what they know for sure > Ask how important it is > Don’t expect the complete scoop > Expect to dig around yourself and validate with them > Expect to synthesize, fill in the blanks and decide some stuff for yourself The kind of requirements will we collect > We will *not* ask: What should it do? ex. picking technologies for the sake of it being cool > We will ask: - What information - How do you want to get the info - What tasks will you use the info to accomplish - Are there any technology “must's or shoulds" Information requirements > What describes the information overall? > What types of information do we need? (student services example) - Course overviews - Degree requirements - Policies - Employer profiles Presentation Requirements > What channels? - For us just the web (in reality it could be different, limited to the web for scope of course) > What styles? - Ask indirectly for more relevant answers ex. magazine preference - How much do we have to spend? - Bring in your knowledge from the persona or other user analysis > What navigation? - That is natural to the info - That is natural for the user - That our technology supports Task Requirements > Goals - What do you want to accomplish? - What is the most important outcome? - If you had this info, what could you do that you wouldn’t do now. > Steps - How do you reach this goal today? - What do you need to specify in order to get just the right info? Technology Requirements > Server platform - What do we use now? - What policy is in place? - What skills do we have? > Client platform - What do they use? - How many can we support? > Programming - What policy is in place? - What skills do we have? # END #