MY WEB SITE PARTIAL THESIS PROPOSAL: Story-Idol

The Conceptual Design

The Story-Idol system as presented in this report is a prototype of a system that I have in mind. Through, mainly, evolutionary prototyping (Hall, 2001) I would hope to eventually reach a complete working prototype, which then should evolve through further prototyping into a beta release. Although this system started out with some php code, I quickly reverted to non-php code as the hosting site might not allow php posts—which made php files useless to any intelligent degree. I have found my pages work on my computer without php running—so I assume they will work on anyone else's computer. I did not have time to re code all the files to completely remove php post commands in some of my forms. Of course, the system is going to have to evolve into a php/mysql one at the next stages anyway. So I wanted to keep some of these forms in anyway. In terms of paper prototyping, there was a lot of rapid prototyping (Hall) going on, especially in the early stages. I also used rapid prototyping on my templates for the navigation top menu-bar and side menu-bar. Even now, I know I'll be changing it again in my next revolution. Note that the use of Dreamweaver templates allows me to use rapid prototyping and maintenance on the navigation and corporate identity of the Story-Idol web site. It is true though, that significant rapid prototyping might take place at my next stage because I have concluded that I need to completely re-build the code as I can only now see the limitations of Beckett's original code [as of from 24/01/2005 early morning]. Nevertheless, the concept of a super-critique and producing publishable formatted prose for download and upload has been firmly established in my mind. And these concepts will be used in my final proposed Story-Idol.com system.

Conceptually, I experimented with all the dynamic combinations I could lay my hands on. ASP.NET with SQL, and, say, PHP with MYSQL. I used a demo site that allowed databases to be uploaded through a web page, thus, overcoming the Universities imposition on connecting to SQL remote Servers. It would be quicker in many ways to develop dynamically. The site was made static because of the limitations imposed by time in this quick thesis partial proposal made it impossible to rely on a dynamic setup—plus, it is advisable to do a site run on my local offline laptop. This means the time delays cannot really be appreciated. But remember this static prototype models a dynamic site.

The concept of purchasing a Story-Idol domain was important—and I own Story-Idol.com. I rejected the notion of Storyidol without the hyphen or Story_Idol with an underscore. I tested this site at home by redirecting the domain name, and except for the post php commands, it worked as it did on my home laptop.

According to Hall, prototypes can be distinguished by their fidelity. The higher a prototype's fidelity, then the closer it is to representing the completed system. Hall classifies story boarding or paper aspects, written or drawn, of prototypes as low fidelity. He (Roger) classifies screen-based, or the actual computer system prototypes, as high fidelity. As the design ideas for this project were only at a conceptual level, paper based low fidelity, rapid prototypes were used. In order to aid the development of high fidelity prototypes Personae were used (and even implemented into the prototype itself—as you shall see). Personae were placed in scenarios that gave a walkthrough based on need and want (and thus necessary or at least desirable) that would help flesh out an understanding of what is needed in the prototype. A persona should be a 'rich picture' of an imaginary person who represents a Primary user of the proposed system—a core representative (Dix et al, 2004).

Nearing the end of the prototype I used three real users to see if they could find errors when I hosted the system on the Story-Idol domain. But this was simply to test the system's workability, so they were in fact, Tertiary users.

Through the use of three persona (with a scenario for each) representing a writer, reader, and critic, I was able to put myself in the position of the core user group. This enhanced my prototyping and changed my ideas of the system I had originally planned. feedback, leading to changes had been conducted in order to complete the detailed design specification. The personae and scenarios are d emonstrated by following the link below.

view Personae

view Scenarios