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Katherine’s Status Report for 02/21

ACCOMPLISHED: 

This week I worked on setting up the server, integrating the Google API, creating designs for firmware and software (block diagrams), and creating user flow diagrams. For the design presentation, I created slides for design requirements, overall system diagram, firmware system diagram, and software system diagram. For the design presentation, we heavily focused on creating the user work flow that was easy to follow and also calculate power consumption in order to meet user requirements. I have also started testing our server system with our gnss module. 

PROGRESS / SCHEDULE:

My progress meets the schedule. I was able to finish Google maps API integration this week as well as the design presentation. Because of the design presentation, we also have a good idea of what the next few weeks looks like for software. We also were able to solidify task delegation since we decided what is going to be on firmware and what is going to be on software. This makes separating work and responsibilities a bit easier going forward. 

 DELIVERABLES / NEXT STEPS:

Next Week, I will:

  • Learn how to connect devices (microcontroller) to wifi
  • Implement the route planning system
  • Implement database
  • Learn how software will communicate with firmware 
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Katherine’s Status Report for 02/14

ACCOMPLISHED: 

This week, I worked on the design presentation. After meeting with Prof. Theo on Monday, we decided that we need to scope down our MVP. My team and I worked on creating the user walk through and aligning on a few major details. The first one being whether or not we want to include indoor tracking as a part of our MVP. We ultimately decided against it as we were still unsure of how we wanted to implement indoor tracking and at this point we needed to be certain of our MVP. I also worked on understanding the server side. I researched into API integration with Google Maps and how to set up our servers. We also spent a while on UI designs and user journey. Our product has many states (sleep, searching, etc.) and we wanted to draw out exactly what these states meant and how our interface will allow users to go from one state to the next. 

PROGRESS / SCHEDULE:

My progress is on track. My tasks for this week was to set up servers, research API integration, and create user journey and UI. Our major goal this week was to design + order to PCB, which would allow us to integrating and testing our UI and communication.

DELIVERABLES / NEXT STEPS:

Next Week, I will:

  • Integrate API to node.js
  • Decide on communication protocols
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Team Status Report for 02/07

Currently our most significant risk is that our PCB may not be ready in time. Because this process takes so long, and can take more than one iteration to get it right, the PCB is our bottleneck. To manage this risk, we will be ordering our PCB by the end of the week to ensure we have as much time as possible to test and iterate if necessary.

We did not make changes to the overall design of our device. This is because we had a good idea going into our proposal presentation of what exact features we wanted to implement. However, we did ad user requirements to include more emotional user requirements, like spontaneity of meetup. This change was necessary because our device at its core is designed to connect and build community. It is not faster, smoother, or better designed than an iphone, but people will still gravitate towards it because it makes connecting with friends easier. Our previous requirements didn’t capture this nuance.

After making this change, we also had to change testing plans. Now our testing plans include user surveys and interviews. We have allocated 3 days for these plans. Our current schedule already includes these changes.

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Katherine’s Status Report for 02/07

This week , I worked on creating the proposal presentation. We created a document where we wrote out our content. I specifically worked on the use case and use case requirement section. Prof. Theo told us that our abstract missed the emotional use case requirements, such as metrics that measure stress reduction, or more spontaneous meetups. I wanted to make sure our requirements measured these requirements in a quantifiable way. Additionally, I wanted it to be very clear why our device is useful and is better than an iphone. I spent a good amount of time looking into the market our device fits into and how our device is different from the iphone.

I are currently right on schedule, as we created the schedule very recently. The main milestones we want to reach this next week is to have the PCB designed and ordered. I need to learn more about Google maps APIs and develop an understanding of how I would integrate it into our project.