 SIMS
213
|
| John
Fritch Tom Selsley Kaichi Sung Mary Trombley email whole group |
| Final Report (Comprehensive) |
| Final Presentation [PPT] |
|
Third Interactive Prototype (Requires MSIE 5.x., Navigator 6.x or Mozilla 1.x) |
|
Second Interactive Prototype (Requires MSIE 5.x.) |
|
First Interactive Prototype (Requires MSIE 5.x.) |
| Assignment 1 (Project Proposal) |
| Assignment 2 (Project Personas, Goals, and Task Analysis) |
| Assignment 3 (Project Scenarios, Competitive Analysis, and Preliminary Design) |
| Assignment 4 (Lo-fi Prototype and Usability Tests) |
| Assignment 5 (First Interactive Prototype) |
| Assignment 6 (Project Heuristic Evaluation) |
| Assignment 7 (Second Interactive Prototype) |
| Assignment 8 (Pilot Usability Study) |
| Work Distribution |
| Heuristic Evaluation for MDTP Project |
SIMS 213 Assignment 1
Project Proposal for BriefBank
Project Members
| Individual | Role | Core Compentencies |
|---|---|---|
| Tom Selsley | Group Manager | Project management, visual & interaction design |
| Kaichi Sung | Technical Manager | Software development, visual & interaction design |
| John Fritch | Documentation Manager | Writing, user testing |
Mary Trombley, a Spring 2001 213 survivor, will be an advisor to the project members.
Problem Statement
Legal professionals (law students, paralegals, legal researchers and writers, law librarians, lawyers, judges, and law professors) rely on legal briefs to keep abreast of developments in the law and to prepare new legal briefs for current appeals. A legal brief is a written legal argument submitted to a judge during the appeals process. Law school organizations like The Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at Boalt Hall ("Samuelson Clinic") and public policy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Media Access Project are writing a significant number of legal briefs representing the public interest in technology law. In addition, a number of individuals and smaller organizations work on only one or two briefs a year. Presently, individuals conducting a comprehensive search for legal briefs relevant to a specific issue must contact many organizations in the technology and public policy community ("TPP Community"). Furthermore, an individual authoring a new legal brief cannot easily distribute this brief to the TPP Community and obtain recognition.
To simplify the processes of searching and submitting legal briefs within the TPP Community, Mary and Tom have been developing a BriefBank database for the Samuelson Clinic. BriefBank's interface will be web based and will facilitate the searching, retrieval, and submission of legal briefs. BriefBank's database has been implemented with Microsoft Access, and the interface will be built in ColdFusion and HTML.
Primary Users and Their Goals
BriefBank is intended for the legal professionals involved in the TPP Community. These individuals may be interested in an application like BriefBank to the extent that it helps them achieve the following goals:
- Establish themselves as members of the TPP Community and allow them to contribute to its body of knowledge.
- Simplify the process of searching for relevent legal briefs by using a single comprehensive resource that is dedicated to the TPP Community.
- Simplify the process of making a new legal brief available to the TPP community and obtaining recognition.
In addition to helping users achieve their goals, BriefBank should help the Samuelson Clinic staff meet their goals of simplifying the process of describing recently submitted legal briefs and maintaining a collection of legal briefs.
Participants
As BriefBank is being developed for the Samuelson Clinic, we will have access to individuals involved with the Samuelson Clinic and other Boalt professors and students. In addition, we hope to gain access to individuals at other law schools and public policy organizations working with the Samuelson Clinic.
Initial Suggestions
The legal professionals involved in the TPP Community have significant experience searching for relevant legal briefs. In particular, these individuals tend to search legal briefs that are associated with a particular case name and/or a particular court. Once legal briefs meeting these criteria have been identified, the individuals are very adept at quickly reviewing legal briefs for relevance. Consequently, the first goal of BriefBank's interface is to allow a user to easily search for briefs meeting specific case name and/or court criteria.
Developing a classification system for legal brief subjects is very difficult because the number of potential subjects is very large and many of the issues in technology and public policy law are not well defined. Considering the ability of potential BriefBank users to quickly review legal briefs for relevance, it does not make sense to attempt to develop a legal brief subject classification system and allow users to search for legal briefs with specific subjects. However, providing users with the ability to conduct full text search of legal briefs is desirable and will be a goal if technically feasible.
While potential BriefBank users are experienced searchers, these individuals may not have any experience submitting a legal brief to the Samuelson Clinic. Consequently, another goal of BriefBank's interface is to allow a user to easily submit a legal brief and address the user's concerns about the submission process.