Blog Posts

FDR and Final Post

Last week the Eight Bit team completed and presented the Final Design Review to our coach Dr. Ann Ramirez and numerous members of the Raytheon Team. The presentation detailed all the work that has been completed over the last year, from the initial planning stages to the development and user testing, all the way up to the current progress the team has made. We are grateful to a our coach, the Raytheon Team, and other IPPD staff for guiding us through the process and giving us feedback along the way. Below is the finished video and poster for the project which we hope everyone enjoys. The team is glad we got to work with everyone and is excited for future projects; hope to see everyone in the future!

Poster and Promo

The team is finalizing the project with the continued feedback from our liaisons and the Raytheon team. We still have some small changed to make, but with the majority out of the way, we can focus on the submissions needed for the class which include the poster, promo video, and FDR. Below is the final version of the poster and will be posted here after it is completed!

Video Filming and Small Updates

This week mainly focused on the promotional aspect of the project which includes the video and beginning the poster design. For the video each member recorded segments of information, demonstrations, prototype showcasing, etc. which was then all put together into one video. We begin the video by introducing the team and project, following with why our product is necessary, then finally a demonstration of the working design. We hope that our video is impactful and informative to the viewers!

Prototype Inspection Day

Last week included out prototype inspection day where we presented our current prototype, test plan, and upcoming roadmap. We received great feedback on what to improve or add. One of the suggestions was include more testing so that our final product is more refined. In response to the feedback we added more time to testing in our roadmap and are planning a workshop with Raytheon that implements automated testing.

Initial User Testing

This week mainly consisted of meeting with the Raytheon team and letting them see the website and use the website. We wanted to gather as much initial feedback as possible from people who have seen the original design as we have never got to see the original dashboard. Their feedback was helpful is guiding us to a format which we hope they enjoy. In the upcoming weeks more broad user testing will be implemented; this includes a wider audience, more functionality, and hopefully a small deployment so they can interact with it more personally.

Summary:

  • Initial user testing
  • Critical design and functionality feedback
  • Widen user testing audience
  • Deploy build/transfer current build to allow easier use

Homepage Redesign

This week the team decided to take a step back and reevaluate the design of the current homepage. The goal of the design is to simplify the process so that users can easily access the core functionality of the website. In our current design we have a menu that activates a sidebar which allows users to select where to navigate, and while this would have been a good implementation for a lot of navigations links, we only have four. We realized the sidebar only wastes time at best, and at worst creates confusion on where to go; because of this we decided to move the critical functionality to the top navbar where the user can click at any time.

Old Design:

New Design:

QRB 2 Week

The team just presented for QRB 2 this past week. We received great feedback on some items that we overlooked and it definitely helped visualize the timeline and what needs to get done. The team is now more confident with the progress we have made and our plans for the rest of the semester.

Key points of feedback:

  • Keep watch on timeline specifically in regards to testing
  • Increase liaison communication
  • Ask client about code analysis

Knee Deep in Features

With the basic layout and design of the website created, it is time to create the main functionality and features. Last week we deployed a ‘rough draft’ to test backend operations and started development, with that said, we have now finished features such as:

  • Searching
  • Filtering
  • Viewing
  • Routing
  • Pagination
  • More styling

With our current progress we are on track and excited about the upcoming functionality we will be able to implement.

Beginning Front End Development

From our last post you can see that the backend is complete; this allows us to freely access the data in the database and display in or use it in whatever means is needed for our project. Right now we are in the middle of deploying rough design of the frontend that will be used to test features and make sure that everything is working as intended. As of right now the first feature we implemented was the ability to upload and delete metadata from the database.

Our key focus points for the upcoming week are search basic design and search functionality with come sort of display.

Back End is Up

After QRB 1 we got to work and now have completed the backend functionality. Our database is ready to go with all CRUD operations in place for the front end to use. We decided to use PostgresSQL for the database because of its ease of use and middle ground in terms of speed and security.

The next steps for us include:

  • Designing the frontend from our original prototype
  • Implement newly created functions
  • Begin feature development