Design requirements study finish line crossed at last!

It's finally been completed! Yesterday, nearly four weeks after its original deadline of 30th October 2006, I received and analysed the final batch of design requirements study questionnaire responses from Chaucer Technology School. This took the final number of responses to 27; seven more than our minimum target. I have therefore been able to complete the generation of the project's design requirements today. This means that we can now complete the gathering of sound samples for the application, which so far has only overrun its deadline by two days.

Tristan.

Perception quotes and women's football club match shoots finally done!

Wohoo! After much delay, we finally managed to complete these shoots on Monday 27th November 2006. We carried out the quotes shoot in the afternoon before the University of Kent women's football club training session, during which we trudged around campus with the camera equipment asking male and female students and lecturers if they could read out our quotes on camera. To our surprise, most people were very helpful and were happy to face the lens. We did not expect to find enough people that would be prepared to read out all the quotes. Thankfully that's the most embarrassing of the shoots out of the way!

For the match shoot, instead of taking seperate shots of each player and ticking them off on the shot list, we decided it would be easier to film the entire practise match at the women's football club training session. It would also ensure that we did not accidentally miss anyone out.
The coach was present for this session and so we captured some footage of him which we did not manage to get during the training shoot the previous week. He did not bring the rope ladders again and so we still could not film the ladder drill.

Tristan.

What is it with cameras and Wednesdays?

Today's proposed University of Kent Women's football club match shoot at 2pm was a carbon copy of last week; that video class again required the cameras! Next week the cameras definately will be available, but the women's club have got an away fixture! However, this is no catastrophe because we can conduct this shoot at the next training session on Monday instead. The team have a practice match during the session, of which we have already got some footage of from Monday's shoot. This in a way is better because all the players will definately be playing so we will be able to film all the members of the squad which is our aim. There is no guarantee that all players will get to play during a proper match.
We will therefore conduct this shoot next Monday (27th November) during which we will also film the ladder drill which did not take place in the last training session.

We also were unable to carry out our perception quotes shoot today. There will be video classes all day everyday for the rest of this week, so we will also have to conduct this shoot next week.

Tristan.

University of Kent women's football club training shoot

This shoot took place as scheduled on Monday 20th November 2006 and we managed to film most of what was on our shot list, gathering around 20 minutes of raw footage. However, the coach did not show up and so there were no training cones or rope ladders. Training bibs were used in place of the cones so the cone drills could still take place, but there was no suitable substitute for the rope ladders and so the ladder drill could not be done. Also, we were unable to film the shot of the team coach. Hopefully if the coach shows up for next Monday's training session with the rope ladders, we will be able to film these then!

Tristan.

Target user group change

After today's supervisor meeting during which we showed her our initial application designs, it was recommended that we narrrow the age range of our target user group. Ania thought that 16 and under was too broad a range; there are wide style preferences within this group. For example, producing basic designs will suit say girls under 10, but would be too simple and "babyish" for teenagers.
On analysing the complexity of our designs, she thought that our application could be aimed at girls around 13 years of age. Therefore our target user group is now girls between 13 and 14 years of age because the majority of our design requirements questionnaire responses were from girls in this age range.

Unfortunately this narrowing of the age range means that we cannot include Canterbury Eagles Football Club in the club profile section of the application because it does not have any girls teams for 13-14 year olds.

Tristan.

Some hard luck

The Jean Williams telephone interview proved to be a challenging event. We needed a phone that had a speakerphone. We originally planned to use one of our mobile phones as these had speakerphones, but our project supervisor recommended that we used a landline because the sound quality would be better and there would be no risk with varying signal quality. I managed to get my hands on a landline, but it was a network phone that would not work when connected to a standard phone line. We therefore had no choice but to use Sam's mobile.
The interview went ahead as scheduled on Tuesday 14th November at 2:30pm, and was recorded using a computer microphone. It all seemed to go along fine; the answers were informative and no too long and so it looked like it was going to be successful. However when we played it back afterwards, there was mobile phone interference included in the recording and so greatly reduced its quality, deeming it unsuitable for our application. Our supervisor suggested that we transcribe it and record someone else reading it out pretending to be Jean Williams.
As transcribing will be very time consuming, we have decided to leave out the non-history questions. Therefore we will only be including 10 of the 20 questions in the application.

When I went to hire a video camera from University on Wednesday 15th November for our University women's football club match shoot, there were none available as there was a class that required them. I had booked it, but classes take priority! This was not a big problem because there are women's matches every week, so I will reschedule it for next Wednesday (22nd).

Tristan.

Arsenal Ladies vs Brondby IF Ladies

On Sat 11th Nov I travelled to Borehamwood to watch the above game! It was a superb match. More importantly I have gathered some live footage of the game and taken plenty of digital photos. Many of the Arsenal ladies play for England, so we've got some pretty famous female players on tape, which we can include on our application.
Of course to top it off Arsenal ladies won 3-0, which takes them into the Final of the Women's UEFA cup.

Sam

UKC Women's FC Shoot

The team has their 2nd home game on Wed 15th Nov @ 2pm. This will be a good opportunity to gather some live footage. I have gained permission from the team to help us with this. They are also happy to demonstrate some training drills before and after the match :o)

Our previously planned shoot will still go ahead on Mon 20th Nov @ 6pm, but due to lighting conditions at this time, we will try to complete as much of the shoot on Wednesday. The Monday shoot will be used as a finish off session and potentially for one-on-one player interviews.

Sam

More changes

Another change to make to the project plan: the Montgomery School girls' football club shoot that was scheduled for Tuesday 12th December 2006 will have to be moved forward to Tuesday 23rd January 2007. This is because the club will not be training on 12th December and the next session after this date is on 23rd January.

Over and out.
Tristan.

Project plan tweaks

I'd like to start by thanking Sam for posting that very useful definition of "succinct." It's certainly something we will need to take on board with our project documentation. Whatever made you post it? ;-)
Unfortunately I've had to make some amendments to the project plan. The Canterbury Guiding Commissioner's final push for more design requirements study responses during the week after half-term has only resulted in four more, so we now only have eleven. Our minimum target is twenty. This means that an additional study will need to be conducted with pupils at Chaucer Technology School. I have therefore pushed the deadline of the design requirements study forward two weeks to Monday 13th November 2006 (originally Monday 30th October 2006), allowing one week for this study to be conducted, and also the deadline for the completion of the design requirements to Monday 20th November 2006 (originally Monday 6th November 2006).
However in the meantime, I have constructed some design requirements using our CD-ROM research findings. Using these, we can now start producing initial application interface designs, so this will take some weight off our shoulders and will hopefully mean that the deadline for this task will not need extending as well.

Over and out.
Tristan.