While working on this user document, we experienced these four major constraints:
Limited time to complete our project
Quiz tool limitations
Google Sites limitations
Lack of interactive coding tutorials
The first way that we were constrained was related to the amount of time we were given to complete this project. Since this was a class project, at the end of the day, we needed to develop this website fully within a smaller time window than we would have ideally and needed to finish it by the deadline determined by the class. While we think that we did a good, thorough job on our project regardless, we did feel the pressure of this time constraint and maybe could have addressed some of our other project restraints more robustly if we had more time to complete the project.
The second way that we felt limited when creating this project was by the quiz tools available to us while making the quiz. It took a lot of effort, time, and trials to find and implement a quiz tool that fit our needs. Even so, we still had to make compromises on the quiz tool we settled on, which was Typeform. Typeform gave us access to creating a very intuitive quiz design but lacked in tools for the logic of the quiz. Due to this limitations, we feel like our results from this quiz logic aren't as accurate as they could have been. Although Typeform lacks great quiz logic tools, the platform gives us benefit of our quiz being intuitive and seamless for our users. In an ideal situation, we would have been able to build a quiz that would have been easy to navigate through as a user and have accurate logic to give the best results to our users.
The third way in which we felt constrained during this project was by the tools we used to make this website. Because of the time window in which we needed to complete this project, it made the most sense for us to implement our website using Google Sites, which allowed us to do so quickly. However, this led to some issues such as formatting. Google Sites is great for making the website design process easy and intuitive but also lacks customizability. This means we were constrained to layouts that Google Sites provides and had to make comprises when designing this webpage.
The fourth and final marea that we were constrained was when it came to our interactive coding tutorials. Our original idea was to have interactive tutorials for every language. However, the tool we were using called Replit, was missing one of our languages (MATLAB). As a result, we decided to just embed a video tutorial for MATLAB. We also chose to do this for our HTML/CSS page as it didn't lend itself well to our tutorial format using Replit.
This user document is an efficient and compact way to introduce beginner programmers to various programming languages as well as providing a resource for helping beginner programmers decide on a first programming language. Through user testing and multiple design iterations, we decided to create this Google Site with embedded surveys, tutorials, summaries, and links to helpful resources. This is a great starting point for beginners to choose their first programming language and get accustomed to it because it allows for them to do so from a single website. Instead of going to Google and searching up multiple websites and having many tabs open when doing research to decide on their first programming language, leading to an overwhelming and time-consuming experience, the user can simply click through our website for all of the information they need.