Sprint 6 finished on Tuesday, April 16th. Sprint 6 consisted of the final feature requests for this project, which include: About Page, Help Page, Contact Us Page, Internship Page, and Fair Use (Copyright) Page. It should be noted that many of these pages are waiting for content (and the hook from LibAnswers) from Digital Services staff.

The final  Maintenance Sprint will run from Tuesday, April 16th to the end of the day Tuesday, April 30th and will fix all known bugs, update the admin interface, and incorporate additional feedback from usability and from the Project Team, who is meeting again on April 23rd to discuss any outstanding issues and to give feedback on the system prior to it moving to production.

Sprint 5 is over.  It went from March 27 to April 8, 2013 –  a few days longer than anticipated.  The features that were developed in this Sprint were the Citation feature and the Digital Cart.

Sprint 6 started on Wednesday, April 10th and will run for 4 days going till the end of the day Monday, April 15th.  The remaining features are: About Page, Fair Use Page (Copyright Page), Contact Us Page, Internship Page, and Help Page. This is the last numbered Sprint – the next one is just a maintenance sprint that will tie up any loose ends, clean up the administrative interface that Digital Services staff will use to maintain the features on the front-end, fix remaining bugs, and take into consideration any outstanding issues.

Nicci and Michele are working on the content for these pages and on the content for LibAnswers which will serve as the FAQ and Help within the Digital Library.  Also, there is still much discussion about the design of the header, the language used with the search functionality, and the features on the Collections page.  The Usability Team wrote another report on the latest tests they conducted, and recommendations were made and are being discussed.

On March 1st and 4th 2013, the UHDL Redesign Usability Team (Beth German and Nicci Westbrook) conducted a usability spot-check and one-on-one testing in the M.D. Anderson Library with patron volunteers. The spot check focused how the item thumbnails indicated to the user that an item was a compound object. The one-on-one usability testing focused on the sorted collection page, collection page, searching, and the search results page. View the report here.

Sprint 4 is over and went from March 6-21, 2013. The major feature that was developed in the Sprint was the Item Page, which itself is rich with other features.

Sprint 5 starts today, March 27, and will go for seven days, ending on April 4, 2013. The features being developed in this Sprint are the Citation feature and the Digital Cart. The time estimate for this sprint is shorter than previous sprints because most of the work on the Digital Cart has been developed previously and just needs so be integrated in this new system.

Sean also said that the rest of the features for the UHDL should be able to be completed in one more sprint after this one. Then there will be a longer maintenance sprint that fixes bugs, implements final feedback, and cleans up the admin interface. Once all development is done, the UH Digital Library code will be placed in a Release Candidate (RC) state and installed on a site (only accessible to those within the Libraries’ IP range) and where CDM 6.1 currently lives. The new home could be used for demoing the new UHDL to the library and for final testing. We will also be using that site to test the production move processes. Once the maintenance sprint is over, I anticipate that we will be able to set a date for launch. I think our users and the rest of the library be thrilled to hear that!

Over the next couple weeks or so, the UHDL Usability Team (Beth and Nicci) are planning on doing additional usability testing on some of the features from Sprint 4 as well as changes made from previous sprints. This includes changes with the collection page, item pages, navigational menus in the header, etc. Once they are done, as in previous sprints/usability tests, they will write up a brief report with recommendations.

The Project Leads (Nicci and Rachel) are meeting today to revisit our list of tasks and tackle any outstanding items needing our attention, and to discuss the next steps in the process.

In short, the project is going swimmingly!

Sprint 3 is over and went from February 14-21, 2013. Features that were developed int he Sprint were Browse Page, Search, Search Results Page.

Maintenance Sprint 1 was from February 25 – March 1, 2013.  It involved fixing some bugs, enhancing some features, and implementing feedback from the Project Team.

Sprint 4 started on March 6 and will go for 12 working days, ending on March 21, 2013. The feature being developed in this spring will be the Item Page, which is the meat of the Digital Library and there are tons of rich of viewing options for users on item level pages.

Additionally,the Project Leads (Nicci and Rachel) received another Usability Report based on usability testing from Sprints 2 and 3 from the Usability Team (Nicci and Beth) and will be discussing the recommendations and other outstanding issues and prepare a list of recommendations to the Sean Watkins for the Development Team.

The Usability team has conducted usability testing on search features and user interface from development in Sprints 2 and 3.  Here is the report. 

The usability team has conducted a spotcheck based on the development work completed for sprint 1.  This document summarizes our usability findings and recommendations to the development team based on these findings.

First Sprint Spotcheck Report [http://weblogs.lib.uh.edu/uhdlredesign/?attachment_id=251]

Today the usability team performed and processed a spotcheck for sprint 1.  A report will be posted to this blog soon.

From Sean Watkins:

I’m pleased to announce our Sprint 2 for the Digital Library Redesign has been completed. As a recap the features for this Sprint were the Sorted Collections Page, Collections Page, and Site map. The Admin interface to interact with the collection information such as image, description, subject/format, and visualizations were also added.  I have provided different visualizations for each collection for your viewing pleasure. The DJ Screw collection shows off the slideshow, Perales shows the timeline (which was created by selecting items in the admin), and USS Blue Bonnet Newsletters shows off the map with geo location pins. You will also notice that some of the visual elements in the layout have been updated to give pages a more depth feel. Content hasn’t changed, just in how it’s presented.

There is still much to do and work on, such as getting a finalized header in place, but we will be finding time to get everything in order. With that said we have also prepared a new set of features for Sprint 3. This next sprint will consist of: Browse Page, Search, and Search Results Page. The estimated time is set at 6 days, which starting Thursday, Feb 14th will take us through Thursday, Feb 21st. As always I’ll be keeping you updated on the progress.

Following Sprint 3 we will be having a small Maintenance Sprint. This sprint will go from Monday, Feb 25th through Friday March 1st. The sprint is designed to clean up all the bugs we have encountered in our sprints and to finalize some of the design elements. This can also give us a chance to implement any feedback you might have. If you have any comments that will require changes, please send them into me before Monday, Feb 25th. Don’t worry too much if you can’t by then. You’ll have other opportunities

So far I’ve been very pleased by what we’ve been able to do and we’ve stayed on track, which has been amazing. See everyone on Thursday for our weekly meeting.

Today the usability team met to review and finalize independent preparatory work for the sprint 1 spotcheck.