Blog Posts

QRB 1 Week

Eight Bit was thrilled to present information regarding our project, the progress we have made, and what our timeline is set to be for this upcoming semester. We received critical feedback that will be helpful in moving the project forward.

Summary of feedback:

  • Clarify team work split/individual roles
  • Make sure deadlines are being met
  • Update the TAM model

Starting Off the New Semester

Previous

The first semester finished with the team completing the design prototype and its approval from Raytheon.

Upcoming

This upcoming semester is going to begin with a focus on development of a functional prototype. Creating this prototype will allow the team to debug and test all the necessary features before moving on to a stable build. Once significant testing is completed the team will start implementing unit testing with automated software that deploys user test cases against the system. Finally, the team hopes to wrap up the semester with a finalized and polished project to deliver to Raytheon.

PDR Revision and Final Contract

The presentation of our PDR to Raytheon went well. The team received valuable feedback on what to add and the process they have to go through for approval of certain development items such as a framework/library.

With the PDR presentation finished, the team has been working on early wireframe designs to show the Raytheon team for initial feedback. These wireframes primarily outline a broad view of critical aspects of the design such as base layout, search features, tab overview, etc. These key features will play an important role to the overall UI and experience to the website so it is important to define them early and make changes to them now.

The next steps for the team is to start working on elementary prototyping will continuing the wireframe design and feedback loop. Hopefully with the combination of the two the team can stay on the path towards a great product.

PDR Preparations (The Real Deal)

The team presented their PDR presentation to fellow IPPD collogues and staff and received valuable feedback on how to improve the quality of the presentation. Taking these suggestions into consideration the presentation was reworked to provide better insight on the project and goal of the process. In the following week the team will be presenting this new presentation to Raytheon as well as sending the PDR report in hopes to finalize the process and deliverables the project contains.

On top of the presentation, the team has also started to prepare for the first wireframing session of the initial design. The team has been constantly gathering information that should help smoothen the transition from idea to reality during this process.

PDR Preparations (Peer Review)

The team has been working to finish all the necessary requirements for the PDR presentation peer review. These preparations include:

  • PDR Report
    • A functional architecture
    • Identifying constraints of the system
    • Concept generation
    • Initial roadmap
  • Prototyping Methodology
  • Expectations and Goals
  • Next Steps

The team hopes that the peer review will provide insight on what can be done to improve the project and presentation. This “practice run” will give the team an opportunity to work out the kinks and issues that come up during the presentation.

Progress Report

The team has finalized the customer needs with the sponsor and prioritized the needs in accordance with how important they are for the stakeholders of the project. Based on these needs, the team has created project specifications that detail features that must be included and requirements that must be met. The team then conducted a preliminary literature review to understand the potential choices for technologies to be used in the project and to develop a plan for how to design and review the user interface. Lastly, the team compared the project requirements and the research from the literature review to propose a framework to use to build the GUI and a development plan.

Initial Research

The team will use HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, and Java SE Development Kit 11 to develop the GUI using an interface library chosen by the team and liaison engineers. HTML5 is the current specification for the HTML markup language used to structure and display web content. CSS describes the presentation of the web content on the display. JavaScript is a programming scripting language that can be used to interact with content on the web page or content stored elsewhere.

The libraries/frameworks that can be chosen are as follows:

  • React
  • Vue
  • Angular

The team will compare how React, Vue.js, and Angular can be used to implement the GUI. React, Vue.js, and Angular are each popular libraries used to build front-end interfaces using JavaScript. React was created in 2013, and currently used by Facebook and its subsidiaries. Vue.js was created in 2014 and is the simplest library of the potential options to learn due to its high customizability and is currently used by Alibaba and GitLab. Angular was created in 2010 and is the most difficult library to learn because it requires learning TypeScript in addition to JavaScript. It is owned and used by Google along many other popular websites such as wix. The team will work with the sponsor to select which library is most suitable for meeting the customer requirements.

The team will follow the ISO/IEC 12207 international standard for software life cycle processes, which defines each phase of the software development process and the expected activities and outcomes of that process.

Project Introduction

This project is sponsored by Raytheon Intelligence & Space. Raytheon Intelligence & Space is the division of Raytheon that provides sensors, training, and cyber and software services to defense and aerospace clients. This project aims to replace the existing EOL GUI that relies on Adobe Flash, which is set to be deprecated in December 2020. This project should replace the existing GUI by developing a new front-end using a well-supported framework. The project will retain the functionality of the current GUI and should improve on the current design.

The solution will be a software project that provides a new GUI to interface with the existing backend. The project will provide important usability improvements to the client by allowing users to interface with an intuitive display. These outcomes have the potential to improve the sponsor’s business by maintaining a positive relationship with their clients by providing a GUI of comparable quality to the EOL GUI provided to the client previously. Maintaining the relationship encourages the client to return.