Duluth YPAC ProjectDerrf E. Seitz

Auburn University Course Projectderrf.seitz@mindspring.com

ABSTRACTYPAC is a mnemonic that stands for Youth, Pathfinders, Adventurers, and Camp. YPAC is an umbrella term that encompasses a suite of closely related Christian youth organizations. This document presents a requirements analysis and user interaction design for a new club web site for a local Pathfinders club. The design is intentionally generic in order to create design patterns and components that can be reused to build other YPAC-related clubs. Besides the Adventurers and Pathfinders clubs, YPAC also includes the Teen Leadership Training and Master Guide organizations.

KeywordsAdventurers, Christian youth club, dynamic calendar, entity management, Master Guide, Pathfinders, Teen Leadership Training, Web site design, YPAC

INTRODUCTIONPathfinders is a Christian young people's organization for youth in school grades 5 to 10, with local clubs spanning the globe. It integrates boys and girls of all nationalities with a consistent, structured, and fun environment designed to promote their mental, emotional, social, and spiritual development. Activities include camping, arts and crafts, community service, recreation, and leadership training. The youth progress by earning "honors", which are achieved by completing a wide variety of in-depth, hands-on modules.

Teen Leadership Training (TLT) is a closely related organization for grades 9 to 12. TLT clubs focus on developing leadership skills.

Master Guide is another closely related organization targeted toward older teens and adults. The Master Guides curriculum is an advanced training program that is both broad and in-depth. It typically takes two to three years to complete the program requirements. Master Guides often become Pathfinder, TLT, or Adventurer club directors.

Adventurers is another closely related organization for children in school grades 1 to 4. It follows the same growth strategies as Pathfinders, except tailored for this younger age bracket. One key differentiator between the clubs is that the parents are intimately involved in the Adventurers club, whereas, in the Pathfinders club, the older youth enjoy more independence and social interaction. For the Adventurers, the parents partner with their children during the class periods by helping them do the crafts and

activities. Periodically, special topic sessions are held for the parents to help them learn better parenting skills.

The local Pathfinders club's current (original) web site that is very rudimentary, offering only basic club information. The Adventurers club has a single, almost empty, page that is linked to from the Pathfinders site. The TLT and Master Guide clubs do not have a web site.

I was approached by the Director of the local Pathfinders club to create a new version of the site. The reason I was asked is because of my professional software skills and also because I am the new Director of the previously mentioned Adventurers club. Although new to the position of Adventurer Director, I am a Master Guide and have served as a Christian youth teacher for many years.

This document is the project experience "write-up" for the project. Please refer to the "Duluth YPAC Project Design" document for the actual design.

STAKEHOLDERSThis section describes the stakeholders and my experiences with them.

Wenzley WoodsWenzley Woods is the Director of the Duluth Pathfinders Club. Wenzley has worked with youth for most of his life. He has achieved the highest level in the Pathfinders organization. You can think of it as the equivalent of a Ph.D.

Wenzley coordinates a very large and active club. He has surrounded himself with a strong set of adults who teach and lead the youth. He has provided many advanced training events for his staff. Since I am the new Director of the Duluth Adventurers club, I also receive the benefit of Wenzley's programs and expertise.

I will not go into the original interview process here because that information is already in the aforementioned design document.

Throughout the design process, Wenzley was very helpful in answering questions and reviewing various prototypes ranging from paper mockups to running HTML. He supplied some of the materials that I scanned to make the images that enhance the site.

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I recently showed Wenzley the running HTML pages for the final design. He was very excited by what he saw. We both agree the new design needs to be fully implemented.

Gus TurciosWhen it comes to computers, Gus Turcios is a "jack of all trades". Gus works as a computer professional and volunteered to put together the original Pathfinders site. However, Gus is not a UI Designer and was therefore very open and receptive to the idea of redesigning the site.

Gus has his own server from which he plans to host the new site.

I spent one long session with Gus discussing possible implementation options for the new site. Gus suggested that we look into PHP. I am not familiar with that, but I am open to learning. I suggested JSP/Java, but Gus does not know Java. It remains to be determined what way we will precede.

Professor Cherly SealsProfessor Seals is the instructor of the graduate-level User Interaction Design course for which this project was created. She was very kind to allow me to pick a project that was of benefit to young people in my local community. It is always better when we do something that will help others, especially young people.

Professor Seals reviewed my initial design and set my schedule at a reasonable pace. Since I am an outreach student, doing well in two graduate-level computer courses, while holding down an extremely demanding full time job as a software architect, is very difficult. I do most of my course work between the hours of 6 pm and 2 am.

I hope that Professor Seals will be able to show some of the nice images on the various home pages of the project to her class. The screen shots are in the associated design document. To size them to look more like they do in a browser, the zoom setting in Word should be adjusted to something like 150%.

USER INTERVIEWSInterviews with the Pathfinder Director and the original Pathfinder web site administrator to discuss the needs for the new site resulted in the following primary needs:

Overhaul the site navigation, page layouts, and style. Add needed content such as award and honor

requirements. Make the calendar dynamically updateable - The

calendar is created as a Microsoft Word document that uses Word's calendar document template. Changes require the entire calendar file to be resubmitted to the site administrator.

Add a database to record youth data such as achievements and current level.

Create an Adventurers club site.

BROWSER CHALLENGESThe HTML pages are actually XHTL, which is a newer, richer variant of HTML. They also use Cascading Style sheets to control their look and layout. I spent a considerable amount of time tuning the pages so that they appeared correctly in both the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and the Netscape Navigator browser. See Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1. View in Internet Explorer

Figure 2. View in Netscape Navigator

There will also be a JavaScript library to enhance the client-side operations. This library was started in the current prototype. Most of the JavaScript that will be needed for the final product is written, but it is in a format that is not compatible with the Netscape browser. It will need to be converted to use document object model constructs that work in both browsers.

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Image ChallengesCreating the images that were used on the site was a real challenge. Some of them were standard images that were available from the various YPAC organizations. However, I had to create many of them by scanning items on my scanner.

The shiny button pins were especially challenging to create. If you scan them in flat, they are dull with no shine. I noticed that they only shine when you hold them at an angle. After this discovery, I constructed a white paper structure that allowed me to attach the pins so they were positioned slightly above the scanner surface and at an angle. This allowed the scanner beam to reflect at an angle off the walls of this trapezoidal box in such a way as to capture the shiny effect. See Figure 3.

Figure 3. Shiny button pin

For other images, like patches, they could scan flat, but they had rounded perimeters that were tricky to convert to a transparent background. See Figure 4.

Figure 4. Image transparent backgrounds

Overall, the image work took up a significant portion of the project time.

REUSEAnother aspect of the design is not as apparent in the prototype, but is covered in the design document. This aspect has to do with building a generic club engine that can be configured and populated through the Administration site to allow multiple, distinct clubs to be hosted by the same system. This aspect of the system gives it a large potential for reuse for bringing other clubs online in a timely and consistent manner.

CONCLUSIONI enjoyed working on this project because it will provide benefit to youth ministries and because it allowed me to learn UI design through hands on, real-world experience.

REFERENCESThe following references are made in the associated design document.

1. About Adventurers, North American Division Adventurers web site, http://www.adventurer-club.com/Adventurers.htm

2. Who are Pathfinders?, North American Division Pathfinders web site, http://www.pathfindersonline.org/about/whoarepathfinders.htm

3. Views and Forms: Principles of Task Flow for Web Applications Part 1, Bob Baxley, Boxes and Arrows web site, http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/views_and_forms_principles_of_task_flow_for_web_applications_part_1.php

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