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During the final demonstration, we received a lot of feedback illustrating that they couldn't see any difference between our design and the existing product. Therefore, we have compiled the unique points of the design concept below.
- Design for students
According to our findings (see the User Research and Evaluation section for details), kanban is the most suitable presentation for small-scale teams. In addition, through the analysis of competitive products, we find that the main audiences of most online collaboration platforms in the market are business teams such as enterprises. There are differences in needs and preferences with our target users -- students, so we streamline many functions and redesigned some functions to ensure that our products are more suitable for student teams working on course projects.
- Split-screen design
Based on the user survey, the current situation of the student team is to use many collaborative platforms for course projects. They complain that on multiple platforms to switch back and forth will cause plenty of unnecessary trouble. Communication also can appear deviation. So we integrate many functions and strengthen the function of the split screen in order to solve this problem. This function is the existing product.
- The time zone and language feature
Many target users express a desire to change the language used by the collaboration platform because it is more efficient to work in a native language. So we add a link between the location feature and the default language, meaning that our product would change the language based on the location. In addition, the time zone of teammates is displayed to avoid disturbing each other at inappropriate times.
- Associate Drive with Tasks
Each task in the Kanban interface displays the file associated with it. As a result, team members can view the files for each task directly in the Kanban interface, increasing productivity. We solved the problem mentioned by the interviewee that due to too many project files, each member could not find the files properly if they did not do a good job in document classification.
Social: The Chat and Share functions could reflect social attributes to a large extent. Also, since our APP is a cooperation platform, it would enhance communication among the team members.
Mobile: The users could check each others' time, even when they are in different time zones. The interaction between Kanban and Drive is also another mobile attribute, since whoever change or upload the file, others could see from new event or Kanban.
The problem space of this design is to help team members with diverse academic backgrounds and multiple professional skills to complete daily work or development projects in a remote and efficient way. Cross-department and cross-domain cooperation is a common phenomenon in current society. However, accompanying problems occur such as differences between the communication and understanding of teamwork, project tasks starting at multiple time points, and other colleagues joining the project in different periods, etc. The factors mentioned above will improve the difficulty of project management, reducing the working efficiency of the team and leading to the stagnation of the project and even failure. In addition, due to practical factors such as lockdown policies and quarantine measures during COVID-19, many groups are physically separated from each other to discuss or work together, which is also a mobile and social issue. The purpose of the exploration of the problem domain is to help undergraduate teams with IT disciplines to achieve remote teamwork and complete course projects. By referring to the research results and technical implementation of the IT industry, feasible solutions are proposed combined with the needs and pain points of target users.
Our design opportunity is to develop a lightweight platform that supports multidisciplinary collaboration for the undergraduate community. The platform effectively manages all types of assets, including code, 3D models, text, and images, allowing team members to macro monitor the progress of various parts of a task and collaborate remotely in the same file through cloud drives and web-based editors. Users can also exchange and share files through our platform, thus improving the efficiency of team projects.
According to the literature review, Kanban is the best tool for managing project progress for small teams. In order to verify whether this result is also applicable to our target group, we put a questionnaire on the cognition and attitude of Kanban in 4 WeChat groups of IT students. By October 17, 2021, 22 questionnaires have been collected, with a recovery rate of 41%. As shown in the figure below, more than half of the participants are familiar with Kanban or kanban-like tools, and the vast majority said they are willing to try Kanban for teamwork. Therefore, Kanban or similar forms of tools are incorporated into our design solutions.
After confirming our design concept, we further investigated the needs of users. First of all, in the previous survey, we have determined that the target user is the student who needs teamwork to complete the learning goal in the course. Therefore, we invited seven international students (including different nationalities and educational backgrounds) with experience of cooperating with course groups to conduct semi-open interviews. We try to obtain user needs from their feedback to determine the main functions of our products further.
After summarizing, we classified user needs into the following categories (the numbers in parentheses indicate the frequency of user needs in interviews):
File Sharing & Cloud Storage (4)
Real-time reminder (3)
Gantt chart (3)
Location & language change (3)
Whiteboard function (2)
Co-editing function (2)
Calendar tool
File and tasks association
Voting function
Document classification
Social function
Custom function
Through discussion, we decided to adopt the following user requirements:
We have given reasonable reasons for each user requirement that we do not adopt. Due to space reasons, I will not elaborate here in order. Take the need for 'document classification' as an example. After discussion, we believe that users would like to do document classification by themselves. They can create folders on the Drive interface to classify all files or create more subsets. And we believe that if files are associated with Tasks, there will be no situation where users cannot find the corresponding file. So we will not adopt it.
We completed wireframing and prototype production based on user surveys. Then we carried out an evaluation, using the methods of Walkthrough and Think-aloud. We invited 9 participants and designed 5 tasks.
- Enter Kanban from the homepage
- Invite group members
- Make a split-screen for Kanban and Drive
- Upload a new file on Drive
- View the flowchart, Gantt chart, and calendar page
We firstly described our design concept and the problem we wanted to solve to the participants. Then the participants were asked to complete the tasks independently and put forward their opinions and suggestions during the process. We observed the participants but did not interfere in any of their actions. After the completion of the test, we sorted out the qualitative and quantitative data from the research and held a group meeting for the evaluation process. After discussion, we sorted out the following contents:
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Most users felt confused when they launch into our web page for the first time
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The Spilt Screen button and the View Switcher button were very similar and misleading, and participants were not sure about which one to interact with.
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An error alert would pop up after clicking the button to upload the file to the Drive page.
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It was not clear what flowcharts were for, and they seemed to be very complicated.
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Gantt charts were believed to be similar to the calendar. We were suggested to remove one.
Based on these results, we made the following iterations:
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A tutorial was added When users enter the site for the first time, there will be a short tutorial to familiarize them with the features of the site.
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View Switcher button removed We removed some features (will be explained later) that made the View Switcher button no longer functional. Also, we removed this button to avoid confusion with the spilled screen key.
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Changed the pop-up display error after clicking the upload file button on the Drive interface.
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Deleted the flow chart We tried to show users their tasks in a different way, with users switching back and forth between three different tasks (click the View Switcher button): Kanban, flow chart, and Gantt chart. We originally wanted our site to be more personal, so users could choose how they wanted to display it. However, in this evaluation, participants all reported that the flow chart looked very complicated and not as clear as the Kanban interface, and they most likely would not use the flow chart. So we decided to remove the flowchart.
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Gantt charts were deleted The problem with Gantt diagrams was not as clear as Kanban. And participants said that calendars and Gantt charts were similar and did not need to exist at the same time. We took into account the calendar function we designed, with more customizable space, that was, users could add some personal work plans to the calendar. The Gantt chart was just a way of showing information about tasks. So we decided to cancel the Gantt chart retention calendar feature.
Hanwen Guo(44605865): Hanwen set up the direction of the group project via desk research. Conducted several user interviews, created the original wireframe. Hanwen also made a contribution to the Figma prototype and the concept proposal. As the group leader, Hanwen also scheduled and organized the activities for team PSG.LGD. Besides, Hanwen was the host in both Stand-Ups and made the promotional video for TeamUP.
Bingxuan Li(46336190): Bingxuan took a lot of effort in the Hi-Fi prototype making, he contributed the “Domain Research” section in the concept proposal and the “Problem Space” and “Design Opportunity” section in the Wiki Page. Bingxuan also contributed to the Poster and conducted user research.
Yongbo Zhang(45781391): Yongbo is one of the main code contributors to our Proof of Concept Prototype. Before starting coding for TeamUp, Yongbo studied our technical needs. And designed the goal and flow for the Proof of Concept Prototype and realized many crucial functions including getting users local time in their OS via JavaScript.
Xiao Liu(44932691): In the phase of desk research, Xiao studied a huge amount of pre-existing products and extracted functions we might need. Xiao designed the questionnaire for our interview and the methodology of the upcoming user research and the evaluation method. Xiao analyzed the qualitative data for our team, and also contributed to the concept proposal, poster, and the “User Research” “Evaluation” “Iteration” section on the Wiki page.
Rui Gao(44486233): Rui made a contribution to the Med-Fi and Hi-Fi prototype design and conducted several user interviews. Rui also analyzed the quantitative data and qualitative data with Xiao and joined the poster making. In the report, the “Evaluation” and “Instruction” section is made by Rui.
Yamin Zhang(46853790): Yamin is another code contributor for the Proof of Concept Prototype. Followed by the instruction from the design team and the Hi-Fi prototype on Figma, Yamin set up the frame of TeamUp with Html and CSS, including frames like Kanban, Calendar, Chat, and functions like the split-screen. Yamin also designed the flow of Proof of Concept Prototype with Yongbo, making it more streamlined and straightforward.
Lei, H., Ganjeizadeh, F., Jayachandran, P. K., & Ozcan, P. (2017). A statistical analysis of the effects of Scrum and Kanban on software development projects. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 43, 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcim.2015.12.001