This Monday, we came to our client’s office and had a meeting with them about the ideas we came up with last week. It lasted much longer than we expected, but we got many useful feedbacks and now I think we have a much clearer vision of this project now.
Design
Our client seems to like our Art Style 1, the interactive star theme, best. They like the idea of incorporating space themes into the art and make it interactable. We worried that it might be too “gamey” but I think we also want to challenge the region to embrace new tech.
Scope
We also talked about our scope for this project. Because we only have a semester, we want to make the scope reasonable to fit in our schedule and polish it as much as we can.
After the meeting, we decided that the team will develop an app that has the following functions: signup/login, survey, navigating, check booth interaction, reward and collecting feedback. Our goal is to finish developing and deploy this app before the end of the semester. For the big screen idea, we might not have time to develop it, but we can provide ideas, so the next team can continue the work.
Timeline
After the scope is set, the team worked out a schedule that we think is reasonable and hits our goal. We drew the calendar on three huge sheets and put them on the wall, then we put stickers on each date, representing our goal for each milestones and checkpoints.
Here’s a breakdown:
- Week 4
- Finish a tech demo – the login function, to show that our tech can work
- Ashley will finish UX flow
- Rongjia will research firebase, set up firebase, and develop API for frontend
- Shelley will research React, set up GitHub repo, work on signup frontend and testing
- Week 5
- Ashley will finish branding, poster, half sheet, logo, team photo
- Tech will work on the survey function
- Week 6
- Tech will work on recommendation function
- Rongjia will work on API for survey and recommendation, help set up front end pages
- Shelley will work on full survey functionality and start work on recommendation
- Week 7
- Tech will work on feedback function
- Ashley will finish rough UI for the app, and polished UI for the recommendation function
- Week 8
- Halve presentation
- We will finish one key feature that is polished – recommendation
- The rest of the feature will be workable and playable, but not polished
- Week 9 – 10
- Spring break + GDC
- Tech will continue developing and add art assets
- art will finish another key feature UI
- Week 11
- Art will finish all the UI, including feedback, recommendation, survey, signup/login
- Tech will work with art to add assets into the app
- Week 12
- Playtest day on Saturday
- We have a beta version of the game
- Art will work on polishing UI, making transit UI effects
- Rongjia will help set up front end pages and fix backend bugs
- Shelley will work on frontend UI polish and testing
- Week 13
- Shelley will keep working on integrating art into the frontend, and connecting front end to the backend, and work on deployment
- Rongjia will work on big screen backend data and fix any bug we have
- Week 14
- Soft opening
- All done, deployed and playable
- Wil finish final website
- Week 15
- Documentation
- Minor fix
- Week 16
- Final presentation
The milestones are:
- Week 4: Quarters
- Finish basic UX flow
- Tech demo – sign up / log in
- Week 8: Half Presentations
- Playable prototype with all functions
- One polished (Art + Tech) feature – recommendation
- Week 12: Playtest Day
- Beta version of the game (Art + Tech polished)
- Week 14: Soft Opening
- All done and deployed
- Week 16: Final Presentation
- Final handout
We know that the timeline might change depending on feedback/playtesting results we received, there will be many iterations on the app. But we will try and make the best app we can make for the attendees at the conference!
Scrum
To make sure things stay on track and make this process go smoother, we use the “scrum” framework suggested by our instructors.
Every Monday, we will have a sprint planning meeting, and everyone puts stickers on the scrum board, representing their tasks for the week.
Every morning when we arrive at ETC at 9:30 am, we will have a 5-min stand-up meeting. Each teammate will talk about what they did yesterday, what they are going to do today, and what blockers they have.
We think this can really help our development process!
Core Hour
We also set some “core hours” for the team. Core hour means the time that all the teammates are supposed to be in the project room together. This is an ETC tradition. Even though we have different course schedules, but we try to set 20 hours each -week when all of the teammates can be in the project room. We think this can make the team more efficient.
These are the core hours for team Liftoff, feel free to come and say hi!
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