Devcathlon: Mockup 6's Review

My software development class is about to start coding the “Devcathlon” system. If you read my last couple of entries, it will tell you what the “Devcathlon” system is. Before we can start coding the system, we have to decide on one user interface. Soooo… this week, I am going to review my team’s mockup pages and the other two teams – let’s get started.

This entry, I will be reviewing Mockup 6’s team – oh yeah, that is my team. This team consisted of D. Arakaki, J. Ancheta, and me. This team is the “dream” team, the awesome team out of the class.


The first user interface is similar to mockup 4 and 5’s pages, we also have an administrator page called Gamemaster that lets the “manager”/”boss” to promote and demote rankings, also they can add and take away certain achievements. Our ranking system uses military insignias and you can be automatically promoted if you obtain a certain amount of achievements. I kind of like the idea, as you obtain more and more badges you get to go up rank.


I want to review the second user interface that mockup 6 have. The idea was that in order to create a team, first project have to be defined in Hackystat. Once there is a project, it has members in it, and that is how teams are created. Taking that approach of “binding” between Hackystat and Devcathlon. The idea was to have Devcathlon be integrated into the Hackystat project browser.

With this intregration, it is only few clicks away from defining a project and members for that project (that in turn creates a team). The tabs on the left are layout for the user to have easy access to Devcathlon.

The layout is similar to Hackystat browser, most of the Devcathlon pages are one page-r. Following Hackystat’s layout, the Devcathlon have a similar design to its own layout. Since the pages are integrated with Hackystat, the color scheme is all the same. The downturn is that we cannot define a new color scheme for Devcathlon or else it will look entirely different. There is one or two widgets – gamemaster have the widget with military insignias and badges to promote and demote players, widget to add files to Devcathlon.


Mockup 6’s Pros:

• nice idea of integrating into Hackystat Project browser.
• Gamemaster lets player be promote and demote in rankings and badges
• keeping Devcathlon simply by adding extra menu tabs on the left.

Mockup 6’s Cons:

• Color scheme cannot be different from Hackystat project browser.
• might be too confusing to first time users.
• Gamemaster can be bias.

Overall, I liked the idea of integrating with Hackystat, but it does not let us change the color scheme. Also it might be too confusing for first time user. It might be best to have Devcathlon user interface separate from Hackystat.