The next minor (minor 2.0?)

Wed, Jan 10, 2007

We almost finished the first Ria minor. Right know we are designing the next version of the minor.

These are the things we are trying to improve:

More focus on the development process. The process most students choose tend to be not very user centered
No free choice in development environment. Just Flex and Ruby are supported (for practical reasons)
More interaction design support
First build a small site in ruby and later on making it communicate with flex
More support for designing databases
Contact with former students
Having a clear planning of the lectures and stick to it
More guest lectures of international superstars.
Better contact with the clients of the projects.

The biggest problem for us right know, is how to make sure we have great doable projects. That provide a great challenge, and will result in a great solution.
I’m thinking of doing the following:

Let groups choose the project
Let the group provide the client with a cost calculation for the project, and create milestones.
Provide several mandatory meetings for all clients and groups

What do you think?

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5 Comments For This Post

Waldo Smeets Says:
January 11th, 2007 at 12:14 am

Hard to say without knowing the inns and outs of the current minor. However, given the market I would really say you should focus on the user centered design (or, as we say, Design Led Innovations). RIAs always have 2 elements in them; architecture and experience. I’d expect java and .net developers to be ideally suited to adapt the architectural part of RIAs, whilst I believe that there is a huge gap to be filled regarding the experience design. The knowledge in the market is very thin, and still too much boxed by how traditional HTML-experiences are created for processes. Try to come of with several scenarios that need to be completed online, try to break loose from current technology limitations and make up the best experience. From there try to work down into something that is achievable within Flex?

Raymond van Dongelen Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 11:18 am

Thanks for your comment. We are aiming at the experience side of things, and we try to let the Informatics study design the architecture side. There are however to few Informatics students at this moment to do that job.
There are several time problems in the minor: To learn how to use flex and ruby students need time. Concepts need time to sink in, but some concepts already play a role in the design phase.
The knowledge and skills needed to create great Ria’s is bigger than with traditional web-applications. This is a big challenge..

Waldo Smeets Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

I’m interested to learn how you build teams for a minor, is it possible to ‘balance’ the skills so that combined they have all skills? It’s almost like the real world; I rarely see individuals that understand all aspects of RIA development

I personally still love this article on Defining the Team and application lifecycle: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/cycle_print.html

Raymond van Dongelen Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

Nice article! I think the article points out that we need multidisciplinary teams, maybe with students that are following completely different tracks/ minors. Or at least give the students an explicit role.
At this moment the teams are formed by the students themselves. We do this to make sure personalities match, and the teams have a similar attitude in how they approach their study.
The students are often still trying to discover what their good at. Some start of being a designer and end up being a serverside programmer. The students have a varying background. Some are in their second year of the study, some in their fifth year.
All this learning and finding your place in society also takes up a lot of time

Waldo Smeets Says:
January 17th, 2007 at 7:44 pm

Oh yeah I can definitely imagine. Hopefully the article will help them to get insight into what their best team will be. If you’d now ask them to select players for their football team, they realize they should not only pick friends but that they also need a goalkeeper, a center player, a frontman etc. They do this because they understand what is important to win the game. Hopefully this article helps them to better understand the RIA game and thus also how to select a winning team

ps: The story is quite hot again, ‘real world’ companies are struggling with the same issues right now: http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/davewolf?entry=it_takes_a_village and http://www.waldosmeets.com/2007/01/17/what-makes-a-great-ria-development-practice/

Waldo Smeets Says:
January 11th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Hard to say without knowing the inns and outs of the current minor. However, given the market I would really say you should focus on the user centered design (or, as we say, Design Led Innovations). RIAs always have 2 elements in them; architecture and experience. I’d expect java and .net developers to be ideally suited to adapt the architectural part of RIAs, whilst I believe that there is a huge gap to be filled regarding the experience design. The knowledge in the market is very thin, and still too much boxed by how traditional HTML-experiences are created for processes. Try to come of with several scenarios that need to be completed online, try to break loose from current technology limitations and make up the best experience. From there try to work down into something that is achievable within Flex?
Raymond van Dongelen Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Thanks for your comment. We are aiming at the experience side of things, and we try to let the Informatics study design the architecture side. There are however to few Informatics students at this moment to do that job.
There are several time problems in the minor: To learn how to use flex and ruby students need time. Concepts need time to sink in, but some concepts already play a role in the design phase.
The knowledge and skills needed to create great Ria’s is bigger than with traditional web-applications. This is a big challenge..
Waldo Smeets Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I’m interested to learn how you build teams for a minor, is it possible to ‘balance’ the skills so that combined they have all skills? It’s almost like the real world; I rarely see individuals that understand all aspects of RIA development

I personally still love this article on Defining the Team and application lifecycle: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/cycle_print.html
Raymond van Dongelen Says:
January 15th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Nice article! I think the article points out that we need multidisciplinary teams, maybe with students that are following completely different tracks/ minors. Or at least give the students an explicit role.
At this moment the teams are formed by the students themselves. We do this to make sure personalities match, and the teams have a similar attitude in how they approach their study.
The students are often still trying to discover what their good at. Some start of being a designer and end up being a serverside programmer. The students have a varying background. Some are in their second year of the study, some in their fifth year.
All this learning and finding your place in society also takes up a lot of time
Waldo Smeets Says:
January 17th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Oh yeah I can definitely imagine. Hopefully the article will help them to get insight into what their best team will be. If you’d now ask them to select players for their football team, they realize they should not only pick friends but that they also need a goalkeeper, a center player, a frontman etc. They do this because they understand what is important to win the game. Hopefully this article helps them to better understand the RIA game and thus also how to select a winning team

ps: The story is quite hot again, ‘real world’ companies are struggling with the same issues right now: http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/davewolf?entry=it_takes_a_village and http://www.waldosmeets.com/2007/01/17/what-makes-a-great-ria-development-practice/

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The next minor (minor 2.0?)

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