Competency E

In INFM 204, my classmates and I were assigned a team project that involved creating a design or redesign of a new or existing product. My team chose to redesign the ValleyPBS Fogtracker app for iOS. This application serves the Central Valley region of California and notifies parents about school delays and cancellations due to low visibility driving conditions caused by tule fog. The ValleyPBS Fogtracker app originally showed a simple list of schools that had foggy day schedules, but failed to specify the length of the delays, and users could not search for specific schools. In order to redesign this app and improve user experience, my teammates and I sent out surveys, researched personas, and studied similar applications for inspiration.

My role in this project was to create the overall design of the app and the interactive prototype. Once our personas and user needs were identified, I sketched out a low-fidelity wireframe and got feedback from my team. Following this, I designed a high-fidelity wireframe and built an interactive prototype for the iPhone. Once the prototype was ready to be tested, my teammate invited people from her workplace to test it and give feedback. After receiving comments from the testers, I made some changes to the prototype and refined it. Our redesigned application improved the usability of the app, and users were able to view the foggy delay schedules of schools near their geolocation, search for individual schools, and view their local weather conditions. Redesigning an existing product was a new experience for me, and completing this project collaboratively helped me learn more about solving user-centric information problems for a diverse target audience.

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Information professionals often work in diverse teams to solve user-centric information and data problems. In INFM 201, I had the opportunity to work in a team with two other people to redesign a website and solve data problems. For this project, we were given a case study scenario for a medical museum that wanted to create a website for its collection, add user accounts to the website for museum members, and allow user accounts to accept or decline RSVP invitations for museum events. Our team created a project proposal that outlined the client’s concerns and needs, discussed data workflow analyses, designed website wireframes, and created usable Python code for the website’s RSVP functionality. For this project, my role was to create the website’s wireframes and write the Python code to manage user RSVPs. I designed both low and high-fidelity website wireframes and added functionality specifications for the low-fidelity designs. The wireframes were designed according to the client’s needs and fulfilled all requirements specified in the original case study scenario. Furthermore, the client also wanted their users to be able to accept or decline RSVPs for museum events through their user accounts on the museum’s website. I created a sample Python code snippet to fulfill this request, which could be added to the website during its development phase. Overall, this project helped me improve my understanding of solving user-centric information and data problems while working in teams.

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Teams must implement project management practices in order to assign tasks to team members and efficiently finish projects. In INFM 205, I had the opportunity to discuss the process of creating a scope statement with my classmates. A scope statement is a preliminary general plan that defines the project’s objective, deliverables, milestones, technical requirements, limits and exclusions, and reviews with the customer (Larson & Gray, 2018). By clearly defining each of these items, teams will have a clear overview of the project’s purpose and deliverables during all phases of a project. As I researched scope statements, I discovered the term “scope creep”, which refers to the tendency of projects to inflate or expand over the course of their completion. Scope creep usually occurs because team members may want to change deliverables or add features to a product, which is a common occurrence while working collaboratively with teammates. As I discussed these issues with my classmates, many of them shared their own experiences working on projects with scope creep, and I learned about different ways they mitigated this circumstance in their own workplaces. After discussing this topic with my peers, I discovered that one of the best ways to prevent scope creep is for project managers to be transparent with teams about a project’s goals and finances. This experience helped me better understand how to use project management practices to create a scope statement and prevent scope creep.

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