Abstract:

The paper presents the idea of developing student IT projects in comprehensive, holistic approach. Presented approach extends traditional IT projects development by supplementing activities from other ITC disciplines such as design of application interfaces, software engineering and IT project management. It also give students the opportunity to conduct some research about usability of developing projects and therefor give them unique chance to better understand software user needs, usability issues, influence of usability on user performance, necessities for applying modifications in initial project concept due to occurring changes during project lifetime. Student IT applications, designed in traditional way using UML and BPMN modeling, are evaluated during usability tests performed in research laboratory with end users. These usability research are prepared, designed, performed and analyzed individually. Usability research are performed with two types of eye-tracking devices: stationary eye-tracker TobiTX300 and mobile eye-tracker SMI Eye-tracking Glasses 2.0.

Projects are developed over one year (two semesters). The whole process presented in the paper results in evolution of these projects in time. This evolution occurs regarding to gained experience at studies, work and during research work. This process enables to improve the project assumptions and development.

The paper discusses particular examples of different types of student IT project. Among others one can find applications such as: network throughput monitoring, DNA methylation patterns searching, sharing information on fuel prices at petrol stations, arcade game for mobile devices, mobile restaurant choosing assistant with Augmented Reality.

Keywords:

Student IT projects, holistic approach, usability research, eye-tracking.