Project 3 - WebGrid

by Jonathan Hyatt






Exploration:


The first Grid I created was to compare Motorcycles. I just entered constructs in as I thought of them.

Here is a link to the Grid.

Using WebGrid is fun, but can be difficult at times. I found it hard to thing of opposites that can be used to describe the motorcycles. Usually the things that were different, weren’t on opposite ends of a spectrum. I imagine that practice with WebGrid would help someone get better at thinking this way.

Initial Impressions:
I attended the class where Mildred went over the use of WebGrid, but was still a little confused about its use. I would have to say that WebGrid has some serious user interface problems:
  1. Where are the help buttons??? Using WebGrid is not a straight-forward task, and the terms don’t always make sense. Help buttons explaining each part of WebGrid are a must.
  2. The save page is very confusing. I had to call a friend to find out that “Continue” actually meant “Load the data from this page back into WebGrid”.
  3. Also, two of the three grids that I saved had errors in them, and no data. I lost the whole darn grids and had to start from scratch.
Those are the important problems with WebGrid. I consider them to be very serious and they should be looked at before the next set of students does this course.





Elicitation of constructs on CPSC547 topics


To develop my own constructs I looked at each topic and tried to think of the thing that would be the most different in each. Then I used that to rate the others. For example, Object Oriented programming is a methodology, where as BroadBand Networks are a tool. I then rated the others, on whether they were one, the other, or in between. In this case, tools and methodologies are not opposites, but are different. It is hard to find opposites for each topic.

I used Simple terms that are easy to find opposites for. Only a few actually had a lot to do with the topic. The reason I chose simple terms was due to my experience with the first grid.

Most of the terms I chose were different than Brian Gaines. Only one was close, and that was “Development Tool - Application” vs “Tool - Methodology”. Therefore, one term fit “Consensus” if only barely. The other terms would fit into “Conflict”.

Here is a link to the Grid.





Elicitation of constructs on my presentation topic


For this Grid I used a password example. I entered in several different passwords and then rated them on whether they were good or bad passwords, from different points of view. I did end up using one general “Good-Bad” construct that covers all aspects of passwords. Of the 10 passwords that were entered, only two of them would constitute really good passwords.

Focus:
Focus show a graph with a percentage match map for both constructs and elements. We can see here that the two good passwords match together at about 85%, but do not match with the other ones until about the 60% level. It also matched “bad Password” with “Easy to remember” and “Easy to watch you type it” showing a correlation between each. Perhaps the easier your password is to remember, the worse it is.

PrinCom:
The PrinCom displays the passwords, grouping them by attributes. The two good passwords are fairly close together, and the very bad passwords are grouped together on the opposite side of the graph. It is easy to see which ones are good and bad by looking at this graph.

Here is a link to the Grid.