During this week we completed our User Documentation and Multimedia Presentation drafts, and posted them up yesterday. I assisted Matt with completing the Multimedia document that he had started last week. Unfortunately, we were unable to produce a clear audio for the file since we had to use the microphone in the Undergrad Library computer lab, while other students were talking and working on computers. However, we were both impressed with what we came up with and believe that our client will be very pleased after we update it after we receive some peer feedback.

This week I drafted our team’s ENGR126 group Facebook
instructions based off of another team’s Project 2 Facebook instructions and
then based them onto my team members for further edits and modifications. I also updated my individual usability test
study from last week to include additional questions to target sections our
team had added to our instructions document.
Our team also posted the usability report and received plenty of good
comments that will assist us in the final week to complete everything left to
do. I think we will still have plenty of
room to improve and make sure that our multimedia presentation fulfills our client’s
needs to the best of our abilities.

Attached is my final individual Usability Test for creating a Facebook group for the ENGR126 freshman engineering course.  I updated my usability study draft so that it could target the new areas we have added to our instructions to suit our client's needs.  Let me know what you think.  Thanks.

This week I talked with two Boiler Volunteer Network
representatives about possible project ideas, but they could not think of
anything that pertained to their specific needs; however, they did contact the
head person of volunteer organizations and activities for Lafayette with my
contact information and about our team project.
I also talked to some people in the ME honor society about a
documentation storage project for old test files, but that didn’t pan out
either. So our team began building off
of the MATLAB Project 2 instructions to make them a “starter guide” for
incoming freshmen engineers. I completed
an individual usability test based off of my Project 2 MATLAB usability test
and the other Project 2 MATLAB team’s instructions. I also completed revisions on our team MATLAB
proposal, but then after Matt talked with our client contact we changed our

Attached is my Individual Usability Study for our new updated project that will help ENGR126 create a Facebook group for students to network, post course announcements, and utilize a discussion board for various uses. Feel free to comment and let me know how I can improve the document.

Thanks,

Seth

Attached is my Project 3 Individual Usability Study which is based on our team's proposed idea of building off of previous MATLAB instructions from Project 2 and making them relevent to freshmen engineers.  The final usability study will need to modified after we talk to the head of Freshman Engineering and decide on our project direction.

This week my teammates and I contacted each other through emails and exchanged contact information (cell phone number, AIM screenames, etc.) for future needs. We decided on the name Team Boilers and brainstormed some possible project ideas like using eBay to sell items for various organizations. After our team meeting with Kevin, which I was unable to attend, our team decided on using eBay to sell refurbished furniture that benefits a Men's Homeless Outreach in Benton Harbor, MI. Amy has the shelter contact information and is currently contacting the shelter to determine their interest in the project. However, if this plan falls through I came up with the idea of using YouTube with the Boiler Volunteer Network to allow them to post videos of various events and even volunteer interviews. Currently, the BVN doesn't have any videos on their website (http://www.purdue.edu/odos/sao/bvn/), so they could easily link the YouTube videos from their home site.

This blog post contains Team Ramrod's final MATLAB Illustrated Instructions and revision memo attached in PDF files.  Below are links to our Usability Test and Proposal.

Usability Test Link:

http://www.digitalparlor.org/sp08/mckelvey3/node/1472

Proposal Link:

http://www.digitalparlor.org/sp08/mckelvey3/node/1244

As stated in our proposal memo, the overall goal of our instructions were to help the reader become comfortable using MATLAB for basic arithmetic operations, entering matrices, and searching for information on more complicated MATLAB functions.

As of now, I am waiting to hear feedback from Jacob as to what he thought of the additional content I added to our illustrated instructions draft to meet the length requirement. I added additional steps that should help prevent the user from encountering common problems that first time MATLAB users run into while learning the program. Once I get feedback, we will be able to finalize the instructions. Unfortunately, we never received any feedback on our illustrated instructions and usability test blog post, so it is up to us to try and identify what changes and additions must be completed for the final documents. Next I need to complete is revising the Revision Memo that will be drafted by Jacob once we finalize our illustrated instructions document. Lastly, I need to complete a blog post that includes a brief cover note introducing the project, a link to our Usability Test, a link to our Proposal, and has the final instructions and project revisions memo attached.

This week I created the Instructions draft based on both mine and Jacob's initial drafts, while incorporating the feedback we had received from our ENGL421 peers. I also completed the second and third sections of the instructions based on the previous plans Jacob and I had discussed via emails. Then I passed the document on to Jacob so that he could edit any corrections and revised the usability test document to relate better to our instructions draft. After we receive feedback on our instructions and usability test drafts, Jacob and I will need to edit them based on the feedback and also add additional content to our instructions, which is currently short of the length requirement.

I also completed the instruction and usability test draft for another group that use the program Pro-E. From this I have gotten a couple other ideas that I will try to incorporate in our final instruction revision.