LTN Storage system

For the second project of my bachelor in information technology I worked in a group of eight people, and generally had the role of project leader where I was tasked with keeping track of progress and dividing tasks between the groups members. The purpose of the project was to design and develop a simple system for any organisation or business. My group decided to create a storage system for the organisation Lan Team Nord. To get an understanding of the organisation and its needs for a storage system, several interviews were carried out with the organisations members. A list of requirements was defined based on these interviews and this formed the basis for the design proces. After designing and developing a prototype of the storage system, a usability study was carried out in order to evaluate the design.

Process

The project work started with a PACT analysis, where we researched the types of people that might use the system, the activities that it should be able to handle, the context of where it would be used, and the technology required. Following this three interviews were conducted and a flow diagram was created to visualise the proces members go through when they fetch and loan stuff from the organisations storage. A list of requirements based on the PACT analysis, the interviews and the flow diagram was created, in order to outline what the system should be able to do. The MoSCoW method was used on the requirement list to categorise categories as “must have," “should have," “could have," and “want to have”.

The requirements formed the basis of an iterative design proces, where sketches and wireframes were used to explore possible designs. The wireframes were presented to the organisation, after which adjustments were made, and new wireframes were presented. Through this proces the organisation and designers eventually arrived at a final design. This design was then developed as a horizontal prototype using HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. The prototype was evaluated through a usability study that was conducted synchronously as a concurrent think-aloud test with a testmonitor to guide the test user. Specific tasks were defined for the usability study so that all the primary functions and areas of the prototype would be tested.

Design

The structure of the storage system was grid-based, where each areas could have a specific task. At the top there was a small area to display the organisations logo, followed by an area for searching in the storage system, and then an area to display which user was currently logged in. To the right a menu was created with primary buttons as well as a log out button. The main portion of the screen was devoted to showing a list of all the items in the organisations storage. To the left of the main area was another area which showed information about the item that the user had chosen in the list. By using this grid-based structure it allowed the system to have a clearly defined interface where users should be able to find what they need without too much trouble.

The colours in the system were based on the organisations branding, which meant that an orange color was used as a primary color and dark greys were used as background colours throughout the interface. Buttons were designed to be clearly visible and to stand out from the rest of the interface, so that users might easily identify interactive elements in the interface.

Through the iterative design proces changes were made such as making the list infinitely scrollable rather than paginated, in order to allow for a smoother experience, and so that users could switch between components without having to switch pages. Furthermore the design of buttons and the use of colours was changed throughout the design proces, based on feedback from users and through meetings with the organisation.

Gallery

This section provides images related to this project, such as sketches, wireframes, screenshots and similar. Click on an image to view the full size.