Based on our study we developed aWall to support Agile teams (co-located or distributed) more effectively than existing physical and digital tools. aWall is designed for various Agile team meetings (e.g. daily stand up, sprint planning, and retrospectives) by providing information dashboards, maintaining user stories and tasks, enables customization of Agile processes, and integrates with issue tracking systems. aWall was developed by an interdisciplinary project team of computer scientists and psychologists (from the School of Engineering, and the School of Applied Psychology). We now outline the design and user interface of aWall, followed by a user study to evaluate the prototype.
4.1 Design
Based on the requirements elicited during the interviews, we identified a number of design considerations.
Physical Size. A digital cardwall needs to satisfy not only the needs for interacting with the digital content, but also provide enough physical space to display information to effectively support team collaboration. Therefore, the size of a digital cardwall needs to be at least comparable to that of physical cardwalls. aWall consists of four 46 in. displays (2\(\,\times \,\)2), for a wall size of 2.05 m width and 1.25 m height (see Fig. 1).
High Resolution. Each display in aWall is 3840\(\,\times \,\)2160 pixels, for a total resolution of 15360\(\,\times \,\)8640 pixels. The high resolution display wall provides enough real estate to display large amounts of information at once while still ensuring the readability of text elements, widgets, and views.
Multi-user and Multi-Touch. The display wall consists of a 12 point multi-touch infrared optical overlay (PQ Labs frameFootnote 3) which is attached to the display wall. The multi-touch capabilities allows multiple users to work simultaneously with artifacts and provides an accurate and effective touch experience.
Integration with Issue Tracking Systems. aWall is designed to run on top of existing third party issue tracking systems such as JIRA. Therefore, infrastructure functionality can be reused and already defined Agile processes utilized.
Availability of Information. aWall can replace physical cardwalls and act as the team’s external memory of the project. For that, aWall should be installed in a team’s open office area, always being switched on, and have a permanent view of the task board.
Web Technologies. In order to have a ubiquitous and easily deployable design, aWall was developed as a web application based on HTML5 and JavaScript technology. For multi-touch support we used the interact.js frameworkFootnote 4.
4.2 User Interface
The aWall user interface contains a number of different views, widgets, and interaction techniques designed to support different types of Agile meetings.
Action and Information View. The results of the interviews showed that most interaction with the cardwall takes place during Agile meetings. Each meeting has specific goals, operates on different data, and requires different supporting tools and information. To support these different types of information handling, we divide the display into an action view and an information view. Figure 3 shows the view for a daily standup meeting highlighting the separation into information view and action view. The action view is the main work area, which is dedicated to the core artifacts of a specific meeting. The main interactions during a meeting are performed by users on the action view. The information view provides supporting information and tools needed for the meeting. The information view represents the dynamic memory of the team and as any dynamic system they need to allow for change. For example, the information view for the daily standup meeting contains additional information, like a timer widget showing the meeting moderator and a countdown, a team widget showing the team members, a definition-of-done widget, an impediment list widget, and a burn-down chart for an iteration. When necessary, new widgets can be added and removed from the information view.
Dedicated Views. aWall provides dedicated views that are tailored to the specific needs of Agile meetings. For the sprint planning meeting shown in Fig. 4, the action view is divided into three columns. The left column shows the top priority user stories of the product backlog. The centre column shows the so far selected user stories for the next iteration. The right column shows a detailed view of the currently selected user story. This column can be used by the product owner to discuss and clarify open issues during the meeting with the development team. Relevant documents can be easily attached and opened in the application. Figure 5 shows the retrospective meeting view after team members have sent their iteration feedback where the notes have been ordered on the right side. Users can navigate between the different meeting views by means of a navigation bar displayed at the bottom of the view.
Information Widgets. The information view consists of a set of widgets (e.g. team widget, timer widget, fun widget, avatar widget – see Figs. 3, 4, 5) and can be independently configured for each Agile meeting. Each widget is designed to support distinct aspects of the collaborative Agile process. The team widget shows the team members and can be used to assign people to tasks during a daily standup meeting. The timer widget supports time boxing during the meeting and furthermore, allows to choose a meeting moderator. The moderators’ names are stored in the application and future moderators can be suggested based on previous selections. The fun widget allows users to post personal or fun images to the information view to help bring emotion to the cardwall and foster team thinking. The avatar widget can be used to drag avatars to any position on the wall or attach it to tasks or user stories. Both the fun and avatar widgets are designed to help with the interpersonal process in Agile teams (emotion management, team spirit). All widgets can be detached from the information view and moved around the cardwall to facilitate user interaction.
Availability of Information. Any information needed for a meeting is visible and accessible; either on the action view or on the information view. If the team needs different supporting information, additional widgets can be switched on or off in the configuration button on the right side of the information view.
Interaction. aWall supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction. Fluid interaction with widgets and cards is enabled by gestures like tap, double tap, drag-and-drop, and pinch-to-zoom supporting changing task and user story cards position, moving widgets around the cardwall, and changing the size of a widget. Data can be either entered on the cardwall with a virtual or physical keyboard or via the underlying issue tracker system and mobile devices such as tablets.
Scalability of Information. By default, user story cards and task cards show only a few details (e.g. title). By increasing the card size with a pinch-to-zoom gesture more information is displayed. The text size increases concomitantly with the widening of the cards so that information can be more easily read depending on the distance from the cardwall. When all information is shown the widget automatically switches into edit mode, so that data can be added or modified.