Chau Lucky Nguyen: Set up the front end of the Login and Home pages and compiled the README.
Daniel Beumjoo Kim: Set up basic structure of the project by creating repository, installing node modules and adding passport.js and worked on rendering data from Facebook. Worked on routes and passing data into view. Deploed changd commits on heroku and added socket.io.
Jordan Yoshihara: Created html and css files for main sreen, added handlears into main screen, helped create models and write functions for them, and helped implement search functions.
Steven Lim: Worked on implementing routing and getting user information (such as posts, facebook id, profile picture, etc) passed along different views. Also helped design schemas that were used in our database.
Zhixing Meng: Used passport.js to build Facebook login. Worked on getting extra fields (Facebook profile picture) from Facebook and rendering it on the frontend. Set up the route for logout and worked on removing the session when user logs out. Created the error list to keep track of the errors we have.
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Visibility of System Status:
Social Studying meets this heuristic because the site successfully informs the users exactly where they or the system is currently at, specifically the user's questions and answers are seen instantly when posted, the users are informed when they are logging in with Facebook and redirecting back to the main site, each question and answer have a date stamp, and the numbers on the voting system are immediately updated to notify the users that they just up- or down-voted. -
Match Between System and the Real World:
Social Studying meets this heuristic because the site matches real world conventions, such as the 'Question Mark' icon, which directs the users to the Help page when the user needs assistance. -
User Control and Freedom:
Users are allowed to increment and decrement their votes on each individual answers, easily exit the Help modal, and logout. -
Consistency and Standards:
Words such as 'Post', 'Answer', and 'Search' on the site's buttons clearly state their functionality and relate to the tasks that users are interested in. Subject drop down menu alphabetically orders the subjects, which allows users to easily scan for their subject. -
Error Prevention:
Our site eliminates errors, such as posting empty questions, or questions without a clear category, by making subject selection and nonempty questions required tasks and adding pop-up messages that will remind the users if they forget to do so. -
Recognition Over Recall:
The site utilizes common icons on buttons that allows users to predict the functionality of the buttons; for example, the Help page has screenshots to help users recognize different interaction elements and the search function has a magnifying glas to represent the search function. -
Flexibility and Efficiency of Use:
Users are allowed to quickly search for specific questions by inputting keywords, which can speed up the task of looking for answers for questions you have. -
Aesthetic and Minimalist Design:
The action of posting and answer questions are all located on the same page, which reduces the amount of clicks and showcases the relevant units of information, and a prominent gray search bar was included to not only separate posting and answering questions, it also allows the users to focus to the bar quickly when they want to find something. We added the ability to collapse answers to minimize the amount of scrolling. -
Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors:
When error messages do pop up on our site, the solution to the problem is clear enough for the users to understand. -
Help and Documentation:
The 'Help' button will cause a modal to pop up; it will contain short and easy steps on how to use the website along with screenshots to enable the users to recognize the images with the tasks.