The Wilson Project

Project Ottawa

Procedure

During the course of testing, I developed a consistent process that I used to create each model or mapping. This process, as time went on, could be broken down to a number of steps.

  1. Determing the number of distinct views/screen/pages
  2. Collect code and determine patterns – which block/scripts get used through the site and which ones get used in certain views
  3. Map/Sketch the system with all its views

One thing that grew out of this was a set of probe questions. These questions, in turn, garnered information to build each model as accurately as possible.

Research Questions

  1. How many views (distinct templates) do you have?
    Building system view
  2. Are you the only source of content? If not, what the sources?
    Information – internal/external sources
  3. Are you the only source of HTML?
    Semantic – What is the source of HTML, internal/external
  4. How many stylesheets in your site?
    Presentation
  5. Which ones are the main/commonly used? Which ones are page/view specific?
    Presentation – determining main block/fragments
  6. How dependent are the stylesheets on media queries? [Original Question - Which ones are dependent on CSS queries?] What do they query (device, conditions, etc.)?
    Presentation – determining which type of CSS blocks/fragments
  7. Do you use a JavaScript framework (jQuery/Mootools/Dojo)?
    Behavioral – determing the base, not extensions
  8. How many plugins? How many are JavasScript only (non-framework related)? How many are related to framework?
    Behavioral – determing number of plugins/extensions, manner of plugins/extension
  9. How many of these plugins have their own associated CSS file?
    Presentation (fragments)/Behavioral (relationships)
  10. How many of these plugins inject their own HTML (not just class changes but their own code)?
    Semantic (fragments)/Behavioral (relationships)
  11. How many scripts that are user-written? Are they dependent on a framework (not plugin/extending framework)?
    Behavioral (fragments), determining relationship between plugin/dependent scripts
  12. Any of these scripts inline (not external files)? How many?
    Behavioral (inline code)
  13. How many of these (JS) scripts are not local (external server)?
    Behavioral (external code)
  14. Are there any CSS that are on external servers?
    Presentation (external code)
  15. Are there any HTML that is taken from an external source? [Obsolete question?]
    Semantic (external code)
  16. Does any of the scripts load other scripts?
    Behavioral (representing combined scripts)
  17. Are any of these scripts a combination of multiple JS scrips/files?
    Behavioral (representing combined scripts)
  18. Does your site use some sort of framework other than jQuery, etc.? What are they? Are they extensions of any JS framework (jQuery, Dojo, etc.)?
    Behavioral/Framework relationship
  19. From above, does this framework has related CSS? Does it inject its own HTML?
    Presentation/Semantic/Framework relationship - framework may contain other parts that must be accounted for in other layers and their relationship with the framework and the larger system/site
  20. Are there external sources of content via AJAX?
    Information, extended to Semantic as well