Since I am one of the developers for this project, I would like to dive right into what the weakness are for our system, because those are what really matter to me.
First of all, the current system, in short, is just a tiny bit more than useless. The reason I said it's almost useless is because the current system is very limited in terms of functionality, and it's totally a failure in terms of usability.
For the functionality, it only has a date picker that doesn't really do anything rather than allowing the user to pick a date (hell, so what!), and a tree that displays the structure of the system with some hackystat sensor data for the related members. (yeah, but in a totally ugly and sloppy way) And both of these don't even work for every project. The projects are all set, the user cannot create or delete any project. Heck, the user can't even have much interaction with the current system. We spent quite a lot of time getting the directories tree up, but it turns out that it's not even that useful for indicating the logical "whereabout" of the developers. The structure of the tree gives more information in terms of how the project is set up, and how the files are laid out. But this kind of information is easily obtainable from the project repository, and it's not something that you need to see 24/7. In other words, having that kind of information 24/7 in the telemetry wall is a little bit waste of resource.
For the usability, I didn't realize it's such a great trouble to modify the code until someone aims me about the problems he encountered while tackling the code. I have to agree, it's simply lame. Things that seem to go without saying for me could be quite meaningless to people who didn't write the code. Even with the comment, there is not much help. Not to mention that the comment for the system right now is not sufficient at all. The idea to push back the implementation of a GUI for the user to customize the account information and such is proven to be wrong. It is almost a necessity from the view point of the users.
Finally, when it comes down to the point that is the system actually useful or not, my own opinion is that given the vision of the system - to give an overview of the project - this system should be very useful. However, the current system certainly doesn't fulfill this vision. The poor representation of the member status and the over-usage of the screen estate are major problems right now, and it is obviously not the correct way to go. Professor Johnson recommended the usage of JTreeMap. Although the idea of it seems very amusing, the implementation of it doesn't really fit into the current system. I can almost feel the the big change of the system is coming along. Well, hopefully it is a good one.
First of all, the current system, in short, is just a tiny bit more than useless. The reason I said it's almost useless is because the current system is very limited in terms of functionality, and it's totally a failure in terms of usability.
For the functionality, it only has a date picker that doesn't really do anything rather than allowing the user to pick a date (hell, so what!), and a tree that displays the structure of the system with some hackystat sensor data for the related members. (yeah, but in a totally ugly and sloppy way) And both of these don't even work for every project. The projects are all set, the user cannot create or delete any project. Heck, the user can't even have much interaction with the current system. We spent quite a lot of time getting the directories tree up, but it turns out that it's not even that useful for indicating the logical "whereabout" of the developers. The structure of the tree gives more information in terms of how the project is set up, and how the files are laid out. But this kind of information is easily obtainable from the project repository, and it's not something that you need to see 24/7. In other words, having that kind of information 24/7 in the telemetry wall is a little bit waste of resource.
For the usability, I didn't realize it's such a great trouble to modify the code until someone aims me about the problems he encountered while tackling the code. I have to agree, it's simply lame. Things that seem to go without saying for me could be quite meaningless to people who didn't write the code. Even with the comment, there is not much help. Not to mention that the comment for the system right now is not sufficient at all. The idea to push back the implementation of a GUI for the user to customize the account information and such is proven to be wrong. It is almost a necessity from the view point of the users.
Finally, when it comes down to the point that is the system actually useful or not, my own opinion is that given the vision of the system - to give an overview of the project - this system should be very useful. However, the current system certainly doesn't fulfill this vision. The poor representation of the member status and the over-usage of the screen estate are major problems right now, and it is obviously not the correct way to go. Professor Johnson recommended the usage of JTreeMap. Although the idea of it seems very amusing, the implementation of it doesn't really fit into the current system. I can almost feel the the big change of the system is coming along. Well, hopefully it is a good one.
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