Time to Effect: 15 Days
Sprint 4: The Moon
And just like that, we’ve wrapped the last of our “official sprints” with the end of sprint four. I say official because the time to effect for our final presentation is about two weeks and we’re certainly making the most of the time we have left to really drive our solution home!
It’s crazy to think that Talos has been working together for seven months and counting. We’ve come a long way since we first heard we’d be lucky enough to be working with the amazing people over at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Okay, so what have we been up to?
A lot has happened since Nathan’s last update. We’re proud to say that we have successfully selected/created a solution that takes some of the best parts of our early prototypes and takes it a step further. This sprint has been about locking in scope (trust us we’re not adding any more features) and looking to really increase the fit and finish of our prototype.
The MVF (Minimum Viable Flow)
Special thanks to our lovely mentors Joe and Isabel at Ames for encouraging us to map out or flow and screens to the actions and timeline of our users. The end of sprint three and the start of sprint four was challenging in that our ideas were coming together but also spreading apart as we became more ambitious about what was to cover.
Below the centerline, we broke up every major action and tied the appropriate screen from our solution to it. This way we could map out what the bare minimum was for us to effectively hit all the major aspects of our workflow. Above the centerline, we translated these key actions into our Star Trek scenario to serve as a script for our last few user testing sessions. This representation would serve as the backbone or source of truth for the rest of the team to work off of throughout the rest of the sprint.
Captain Kirk the Antimatter System is Down
Talos had decided to use the Star Trek universe to tell the story and paint the scene of our workflow solution. While we really wanted to show how our workflow works in real-life scenarios, we believe that it’s more important to show how our solution serves as a model instead of worrying about scalability and applying real-life NASA telemetry. Our very own Star Trek writer Megan Parisi has beautifully crafted a Star Trek anomaly that allows crew members to put themselves in a similar mental space when without getting caught up in details they’re so used to in microgravity.
Design Critique and Usability Testing
Now that the flow is validated and mostly final we began to turn our attention to some of the more traditional visual design aspects of the project. So much of our time and resources have been spent on research, interviews, and flow validation but now it’s time to allocate a more substantial chunk of to the visual aesthetics of our project. We’ve held multiple visual feedback settings with our design mentors at Ames but also with subject matter experts at JSC to surface level validate that our prototype and interface are in the right place.
A Sneak Peak
While Katie would have loved to code and develop the entire project she’s going to have to settle for a Figma prototype. As we approach the final presentation we want to make sure we’re able to properly convey the interactions and movement that our solution creates for its users. It’s crunch time over here at Talos and we have a lot to work on this week in terms of final deliverables but we’re up to the challenge and excited to present our work and findings on August 5th.
I wish I could show more of what’s cooking but what fun would it be to show everyone before the big show!
JT’s Media Recommendation
I know most of the hype for the recent launch has mostly died down, but I encourage you to take a look at this tour from inside the Dragon capsule as Bob and Doug made their journey to the ISS. It’s incredible to see just how much has changed from the early Apollo missions and even now with the Soyuz capsules in Russia.
