This week went pretty well. Our group made a lot of progress. We encountered a few big problems. First, our idea to have audio and video made it very difficult to upload a PowerPoint with these included onto the website. I edited the User Documentation that Jorey compiled. I was really busy throughout the week but the group got everything done effectively. The Usability Study vs Usability Test issue certainly cost some time but Tyler took care of that. Overall, I'm pretty confident with the work that was done and I think we can certainly convince Shreve and IT to install DVD Profiler.

I think this week was pretty good. Most everyone is busy with things from other classes. We were able to get very professional looking videos, and also have audio overlays to explain what is going on in the videos. We looked at the usability study and decided that most of it was fine and did not really change much. The main progress we made was that we determined that we do not want to present DVD Spot because we think the program is useless, and we can convince IT to install DVD Profiler because the software is much more useful.

I think more than anything the group has displayed that we are very proactive and everyone is trying to take as many responsibilities as possible. This has made it easy on others that absolutely cannot take more work due to other problems. In a way it's motivating also because when everyone else is motivated, it is easy to get excited. I thought that the reading response over Adobe Captivate was pretty interesting.

I am just resubmitting the pdf under the new heading. I didn't get any feedback and was pretty happy with it. It also seemed pretty good in comparison with my group members'. If you have comments, please leave them and I will update the PDF here.

Our group sent out the client email and received a reply via Nate that the Shreve Hall IT would need to approve an installation of new software. This was a significant drawback, so we met and discussed, and decided that the alternative, DVDSpot, would be so watered down that the project would not be worth it. So we decided we will present the DVD Profiler software to the IT department and attempt to convince them that this is the right move for Shreve. I am on board with this plan because I do think a software solution is much better. It will save them so much time, and later on, they can purchase a barcode scanner which will further simplify the process.

Attached you will find my Individual Usability Study

This week was a little rough until we got going. We had some issues getting a good time for the whole group to meet. We finally got it figured out. In the course of the chat, I realized that some of my team members had really good ideas. I was worried at first about finding a client, but when we found at that Nate works at Shreve and the idea of cataloging the DVDs and allowing residents to see available movies from online I became pretty intrigued. I haven't ever used the DVD Profilers program but have used some other DVD cataloging software for a personal collection. It wasn't the scale of this project, but I had a lot of fun doing it myself because it allows a lot of room to make something cool, if you put the time into designing it that way.

krahmani Project 2 Checklist attached.

This week Hilmi and I completed and submitted the Illustrated Instructions for setting up a home network. We really hope people find them very useful. We edited the instructions per Kevin's suggestions, and the reviews made by others in the class. I think the biggest improvement was that we fixed the formatting, which made it hard to read. We established a single font and spacing, and used it throughout. I am really satisfied with the result. We had a few meetings in MSN Messenger to discuss project specifics.

Attached you will find Team Purdue's Final Illustrated Instructions and Usability Test. Also, there is a link to the original project proposal, and a revised proposal which conforms to the proper memo format.

The instructions are intended to help a user set up user accounts, a home workgroup using the Windows XP home network wizard, configure the Windows firewall, and optionally set up a static IP address.

Usability Test draft:

http://www.digitalparlor.org/sp08/mckelvey3/node/1485

Proposal Memo:

http://www.digitalparlor.org/sp08/mckelvey3/node/1279

On my own part, I would like to add a small part about possible drawbacks of a static IP address, as one user suggested and also since the reading last week spoke of disclaimers. I think Hilmi will condense his work and crop the pictures and rearrange them so that they do not take as much space on some pages. Also, I will put a small introduction at the top of each section to explain what the section is for, and also an introduction on home networking itself, and why it is a good idea. I will also include a list of system requirements and equipment that may be needed for a home network, but I will try to stay far from hardware since this is not a hardware instruction set.

Other than that, we will look at some specific concerns brought up from the usability test, and go from there. I feel pretty comfortable with where we are, especially since there were so few problems with my hardest part, the static IP configuration.