When we received MLC from the Prenostik team, we began by generating user stories with our partners so that we could solicit requirements and potential features to add in the 18-week period, split into 9 two-week-long sprints. We would meet with our partners at least once a week for an hour, holding additional follow-up meetings as needed.

Our first and most major roadblock came up during setup due to the lack of previous teams' documentation on how to get what existed of MLC running on Amazon Workspaces. Through our trial-and-error process of setting up the runtime environment, we not only learned the importance of writing good documentation and how it ought to be written for future developers of MLC, but also learned how bad documentation can cost teams precious time and halt development altogether.

As our team members were setting up the runtime environment, we were also conducting user research through the form of user surveys for the existing software and through user acceptance testing. From the feedback we received, we further developed a list of features to implement, such as a calendar, updated data display graphs, a navigational sidebar, class-specific pages, and an instructor-side view. From that point forward, once all members had successfully gotten the environment running on AWS, our team split up work into design and code.

We iteratively designed MLC's features by showing our progress to our partners each half-sprint (every week). One major element of our design process was our design of the data display graphs. According to user feedback, users didn't feel that the previous graphs were very valuable, as users couldn't understand what they meant or how the information was useful to them, especially as landing page elements. So, we opted to vastly simplify the data display graphs for the landing page in a way that made them easier for users to look at, understand, and draw connections from. The other features of MLC were developed according to this way of thinking as well -- minimal, simplified, and low-clutter.

Towards the end of our project, once we deemed our designs viable, our team switched entirely into coding. Our final project was capable of using dummied data to display trends through graphics, give a user a run-through of the SOM check-in, display data from Canvas through the calendar, and navigate between class-specific pages, beginning from a central landing page which summarized a student's data across all of their classes. We also implemented the beginnings of an instructor-side view, with graphs to view a class's overall motivation scores with dummied data.

Layout & Design Progression throughout Project Span