INTRODUCTION

Today a lot of people live in apartments that they share with different people, these

apartments can be rooms they share with people they do not know, it could be their

family home they share with family members or an apartment they share with their

friends. Because they live differently their likes and dislikes and also their schedules

might be different or they might be all more firmly included with every others' lives.

There are times where they might probably be a need for them to coordinate their

everyday lives and events with one another. These might require different methods

of communication between one another that might involve them allocating different

task and leaving messages for each other or share updates, errands, or reminder of

an occasion to their family members or house mates.

A digital home message system would serve these needs; because it would

serve as a system for communication and a device used to improve Daily life. The

system would be able to allow users drop and receive messages with various users,

it should also allow users to set tasks and reminders and also share these with other

users. Basically the system is a device in their homes, which would be put in a place

that can be easily accessed and noticeable to users at any time.

 The primary aim and objective of the report is to identify the need of a

home messaging system by users and their requirements, to understand what users

need and what they want the system to be able to do, and to design a system that

would ensure that the user’s needs are met according to their requirements, and to

also ensure that users can use the system to leave messages with their relatives or

flat mates. Also the report would identify the different steps which were carried out

before and during the designing of the system.

USER RESEARCH (METHODOLOGY)

When developing a system, one has to have a clear understanding of who the target

users are, their needs, likes, dislikes generally their requirements this is called user

research in human interactive design .Because if the target users are not known one

would not know the approach take while designing. Alan cooper said the result of a

design should be judged taking into consideration how it satisfies the needs of the

users. Furthermore, in the event that the user’s needs is not known and put into

consideration then the design might not meet the requirements of its users. Prior to

the research we needed to state the objectives of our project, which are:

1: identify our target users

2: conduct a user research for our report we conducted an interview and a focus

group.

3: transcribe and analyse the data which we collected from these users the purpose

of these was for us to be able to identify reoccurring patterns and categories the

requirements.

4: Design a prototype from the data that we have collected, then conduct a usability

testing and evaluation on the design with users.

We selected our target users for our interview at random in the university library

and for the focus group it was conducted on 3 participants in the university

accommodations, these users share kitchen, common room together with other
people, we chose this data collection technique because we would be able to get a

wide insight of what the users would want and need, its also easy to analyse and

come up with the users functional requirements, the focus group was conducted in

the usher hall common room, the participants where gathered and the data we got

from the focus group we based on how they communicate with their roommates or

hall mates, how what kind of issues they might have come across while trying to

leave messages for their hall mates, what kind of messages they communicated to

each other and how often they messages are being checked and if they are checked

at all, these process we recorded on our mobile phone.

After the data gathering process, we transcribed the data that we got from our

interview and focus group and started analysing the data, marking out the

reoccurring patterns and categorizing our users based on their similarities and

variables.

Furthermore, after gathering the data we were able to come up with the

functional requirements of the users and their usability requirements, which are:

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

1. The Home messaging system would

have a login menu for users to be able to

login to their account and only the users

can have access to their account.

2. The home messaging system would

be designed to enable users set

reminders and have a calendar.
3. The home messaging system should

sort out messages according to their

senders and prioritize the messages

4. The home messaging system should

notify users that they have a new

message.
5. The home messaging system should

be able to allow users to create new

account on the system.

6. The home messaging system should

have a change of language icon where

users that do not speak English can

change the settings to the language of

their choice.
7. The home messaging system should

allow the users to be able to synchronize

with other gadgets.

8. The home messaging system should

enable user to be able to receive and

send messages and as well as allocate

task to each other.

PROTOTYPE

In the prototyping stage we started with the low fidelity prototype, the reason why we

have done this is because the design can be changed if there is a mistake and

without the design altered. We all brought our different ideas of how the system

should look and we started the design using the functional requirements we gathered

from the users. While designing we used the Nielsen heuristic Design Guidelines we

used these as a guideline to design so we can design a user friendly interface with

our users being in our minds while designing, we made sure the design interface in

screen layouts of all screen of our design was consistent with every icon being on

the same position on all pages so users would not get confuse and start searching,

we also made sure the content of our system on all pages where visible enough for

the users to see so they would not have to strain their eyes looking for a anything,

both the fonts where made bold, easy to read and clear on all screens.
 The images on the system and both actions and all objects in the system where

made visible enough for our users so they would not have to try to remember the

location of any information on the page. We also made sure that all dialogues in the

design had information that are relevant to the users, and the system is flexible and

efficient enough for users to be able to stop and move around the system at any

time, and lastly we include a help function of the system which would give the users

information on how to use the system.

REVISED PROTOTYPE

After we did a usability testing of our system on two users, we wrote down the

issues the participants had while carrying out the test based on their evaluation. One

participant had issues with the navigation and had to keep going back to the main

menu, the other participant complained about how much information was on the

message page, he said it was quit distracting and it make looking for task difficult.

In terms of the system functionality, generally they wanted the system to have

a heading that could describe the function of the everything on the screen, for

example the would be a heading named sort that can help users remember the

functions rather than them trying to recall what the function is, they also wanted the

visibility of the whole system to be more visible enough as some part weren’t visible

enough by making the fonts bolder and maybe some colours in the background. And
lastly implementing a language menu so users can be able to change to the

language of their preference.

Language
menu that
was
implemented

EVALUATION
 During the evaluation process we carried out a formative method of evaluation of

two users, We carried out these method of evaluation because these process is

done for a system that exist already and testing the design on users and getting their

insight about the system would help improve the system and make it more user

friendly and meet the requirement of users Weston, Mc Alpine, and Bordonaro,

(1995).

We carried out the usability testing on two users in the library, the evaluation was

based on how long it took the participants to click and complete task which was

given to them. The first task that was given to the participant was for them to check if

they could send messages and also to try setting a reminder on the system, we were

able to find out how long it took them to complete this task and how many times they

had to click pages and how long it took them to get to the pages.

They also pointed out that the should be less content on the screens so task

could be easily located.

DISCUSSIONS
The report shows the whole process we carried out all through development process

of our design, the design which was designed to help users reduce issues which

they might have encountered when trying to communicate with each other. Our

intended users where people who live in shared apartment or share a room with

each other or people in the university hall of residence. It also demonstrates that the

process which was completed during the improvement of the home messaging

system involves the lifecycle iteration process which includes; identifying of the

user needs, likes and dislikes: which was done in the user research phase of the

research, gathering of the data, analysing data which was gotten, and the non-

functional and functional requirement of the intended user. Designing an

interactive: during this process it was based on the guidelines we got from our

participants, and performing a User Testing: the process involved evaluating the

design on the intended users and getting feedbacks Ahmed S (2006 ).

During the design process we used the waterfall model we used these model

because it helped us the designers to focus on every stage of the system design

before we moved to the final stage, the reason is because when a stage design

stage is passed, we would not be able to go back to the previous stage, we had to

move on.

After designing the revised prototype from the evaluation we got from the users ,they

are improvements which could be done on the design for a better system , the key

issues during a data gathering process was not put in consideration, which is

planning the process in an orderly form, setting of the goal of the [Link] shows in

the report that the techniques we have used in our design process was forming a

relationship with our users which we did throw the consent form, where we told them

reason for the research and what was intended of them.

CONCLUSION

After analysing and getting our users functional requirements, we saw that

most of our participants wanted a home messaging system because it would help

make their day to day lives much easier. They users wanted the system to be able to

perform tasks like help them set a reminder, leave messages and also set task for

other users, while we were evaluating the data, we noticed that users had issues

when trying to communicate messages with one another issues like, the messages

might not be checked, the messages might be read by the wrong person, the

messages might be removed if they used a sticky note method of leaving messages

and at most it might not even be seen because of the location its being kept
REFERE NCE.

Cooper, A. Riemann, R. Cronin, D (2007). About Face. USA: Wiley Publishing. P49-

72.

Weston, Mc Alpine, and Bordonaro.. (1995). A model for understanding formative

evaluation in instructional design. Educational Technology Research and

Development. 43 (3), p29.

Ahmed Seffah, Jan Gulliksen, Michel C. Desmarais ( 2006). Human-Centered

Software Engineering - Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle.

Newyork: Springer Science & Business Media. p55.