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NCSU Master’s Research

UI/UX
2020



PROJECT OVERVIEW
What I Did
Once I defined an area of investigation, I conducted the research that informed my analysis, organized exploratory and visual studies and written case studies using various research methods, and documented my results.

Results
I developed features that we can implement into existing project management tools. These features bring elements like interactivity and accountability that weren’t there before, focusing on time management.




Project Management Tools to Support Agile Methods in the Workplace


Project Management Tools to Support Agile Methods in the Workplace:
Visualizing moments across the timeline of a project through a project management user interface and suite of tools
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Abstract
Project Management Tools (PMT) support the efforts of time management for an individual or team and have been implemented with specific processes like the Agile Method. Time management is the mutual goal shared between PMT and the Agile Method. Initially, the Agile Method was designed for the use of Software Development. However workplaces are now adapting the framework to fit into different processes such as design and marketing. This investigation uncovers a need for design interventions into how time is captured in a moment and interpreted between individual workloads and cross functioning teams. Instead of constructing a new PMT, there are opportunities for design interventions within existing management tools that allow for more adaptability.

Research Question

How can the design of a Project Management Tool support varied interactions through the interface within cross functioning teams to track project workflow in an Agile workplace environment? 
Subquestions

01
How can a single Project Management Tool be used to treat multiple work situations simultaneously?

02 How can a Project Management Tool scale the representation of time by expanding and contracting specific moments throughout a team project?

03 How can a Project Management Tool enable perpetual modifications during all stages of a project?

Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Frameworks draw boundaries around an investigation, identifying what is and is not a part of the study. By defining a specific set of ideas that can be used within a more extensive system, I conceptualize five different elements that create a flexible mechanism of control. The network intends to enable companies to quickly adapt to the changing environment and empower the people to make effective changes (Conboy, Lang, and Kohan, 2010).

Synthesis
Project Management Tools are the foundation for the Empirical Process Control Theory setting the stage for three separate output concepts. The three stages within the Empirical Process Control Theory together make up the conceptual framework of my research. Building forward from the top, each of the GTD methods has an Empirical Process Control Theory intertwined within the system that functions as cyclical cycles allowing constant productivity throughout all combined to create an information processing model. These three outstanding outputs are mini concepts that can operate within the “thing” and work together to produce a tangible outcome or user interface. The three outputs combine to form different parts of the activity theory, which is a conceptual process of how the “thing” will be made.


Investigation Frameworks
The idea of the investigation framework is to help to correlate evidence and intelligence to help investigate more effectively. Therefore, it can visually interpret resources and how they will be used. The investigation matrix framework explores the relationship between accountability and interaction. While accountability and interaction work parallel in the Agile Method, they are different. Accountability is about responsibility, and interaction is about the involvement of something. During my research and construction of the investigation matrix, I found two different ways to communicate my investigation. The investigation framework matrix explores how profiles, versions, and moments are depicted and work together to form a flexible product outcome.

The more fluid process depicts the matrix as the agile process would interpret it as a cycle of doing. Here I am trying to explain that in my investigation, the foundation of the objective is made up of the interaction and accountability that is supported throughout a project. Each of these traits are received in different formats as particular user groups, versions, and captured moments in time and formalize the outcome. 


Through my research and exploration, I quickly realized that the essential part of my studies was about time, specifically time management. I began thinking about time and how it is measured and read in the form of a straight line (like a timeline), but it is also cyclical, and just like a line, you can take it from both ends and create a circle. So I questioned how I could give time a dimensional form and what expanding and contracting specific moments in time or zoomed-in time looks like as a visual form. I wanted to thread-specific variables of Agile together through the representation of zoomed-in moments. The idea was to capture keyframes just as one could visualize as a roll of film — frozen motions of specific moments.

Supporting Files: 

Personas Scenarios 
scrum master 
product owner 
contributor 


Studies 

1.1     1.2    

2.1    2.2

3.1   3.2   3.3


Conlusions 

I realized that project management is not just a system for managing projects. Project management is time management. 

I learned that boundary objects act as anchors and the various infrastructures they are like tasks that keep us moving forward to the next thing. 

I had the life realization that everything that happens in a moment affects what happens next for you and for others you encounter thereafter. 

Agile is not as alient as it seems. Although agile has structured activities and lots of terms and practices, humans have a natural tendency to perform agile tasks. 



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