project-proposal-2024

ProcrastiNOT

Abstract

Let’s face it, with the emergence of tiktok and the modern problem of overstimulation, we all have slowly developed the attention span of a goldfish. Whether you have diagnosed ADHD, or your lectures are simply more dry than an overcooked spongecake, fret not! Because we have the solution for you: ProcrastiNOT. This study application demands your attention. It blocks user-specified websites, it has audio and visual queues that refocus your attention if inactivity is detected, it even notifies your phone if you’ve left your desktop for too long during a study session. You can set deadlines for assignments, and ProcrastiNOT will NOT forget, reminding you everday how long before its due. Its constant barage of notifications are more annoying than duolingo! It’s even more obtrustive than Google Home! But if one things for certain, it WILL help you study.

Author

Jacob Edwards #45893623

Functionality

ProcrastiNOT will implement a complete set of features to assist focused studying:

• Intuitive Interface: An intuitive desktop interface that allows users to customize and specifcy parameters for the below features.
• Website Blocking: Users can white-list important study websites, blocking all others during study sessions, which will help users eliminate potential distractions and maintain concentration. Users can alternatively black-list distracting websites, allowing all others to be visited during study sessions.
• Attention-Grabbing Cues: The application will use audio and visual cues to redirect attention, if prolonged inactivity is detected. This will help prevent users from drifting off task.
• Mobile Notifications: ProcrastiNOT will send notifications to users’ mobile devices if they leave their desktops for extended periods during study sessions, encouraging them to return to study.
• Deadline Management: Users can set deadlines for assignments and receive daily reminders to help combat procrastination, reminding them to complete their tasks. Procrastination arises by ignoring due dates until they become unavoidable. We can combat this through reminding users constantly of the remaining time they have left. The number of days left before the app starts reminding will be a parameter that users can adjust.
• Study profile scanning: Users can input UQ study profiles as PDFs, which will be scraped, automatically inputting deadlines.
• Break Management: Users can specificy break periods for which the above features will be temporarily disabled. Once break period is over, the app sends a notification to the users phone and an audio queue on the desktop.

Scope

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of ProcrastiNOT includes the minimal set of features necessary for study management:

• Client and server based API that keeps track of each users’ parameters and due dates.
• Simple website blocking functionality.
• Basic audio/visual attention cues in response to inactivity.
• Deadline management capabilities.
• Break management functionality.

Mobile notifications for both deadlines and inactivity have not been included, as the choice of implementation significantly impacts feasibility. Although highly important, this feature is arguably not neccesary for the core objective of the app. However, this feature could still be added either through the development of a dedicated mobile app, by SMS, or through a third-party service provider that facilitates push notifications (e.g. Pusher).

Quality Attributes

Availability

Ensuring uninterrupted access to the application is crucial for supporting consistent study habits. ProcrastiNOT be accessible on various desktop devices and platforms, allowing users to utilize it wherever, or whenever they choose to study.

Extensibility

Extensiblity is a core principle of this project, ensuring the addition of new features in response to user demand without compromising the integrity of the system. This will facilitate the integration of expansions, to address new technological advancements as well as new user expections. The MVP is a relatively small subset of the full system, making extensibility highly important for development beyond the minimum viable product.

Maintainability

As user requirements or expectations may change over time, ProcrastiNOT will be developed with maintainability as a core principle. Modular code architecture along with high quality documentation will help facilitate fast updates to meet users’ changing needs.

Modularity

Each feature in the MVP can be developed independently, making modularity a highly valuable feature for this software project. This is the most important quality attribute, as modularity also facilitates, to some degree, maintainability, scalability and extensibility. The ability to develop, maintain and extend individual features independently alligns perfectly with the goals of this project.

Evaluation

The success of ProcrastiNOT will be evaluated based on its ability to effectively address the above quality attributes:

• Availability will be assessed through uptime monitoring, as well as user feedback on accessibility across different devices. User testing, on a variety of platforms and across different timeslots, will also be used to evaluate availability.
• Maintainability will be evaluated based on the ease of implementing updates and enhancements to the existing codebase, to adapt to evolving study habits and user requirements. Regular code reviews and push verification with maintainability in mind, will be used in evaluations.
• As opposed to maintainability, extensibility will be assessed by testing the ease of integration of new features, which will highly depend on the modularity of the system. Integration testing will be used thoroughly, by testing the interactions between existing and new modules to ensure they communicate and work well effectively.
• Modularity will be evaluated through testing the degree of independance, cohesion and reusability of software components. Components should be lousely coupled and cohesive. Exact testing methods involve testing each component in isolation, ensuring changes in one component do not affect others. Also dependency analysis, and integration testing to validate the modularity of the application.

As was highlighted previously, the use of a component-based architecture would be most suitable for this project, as it involves modular and reusable components. Each feature listed in the MVP can be implemented as a seperate component, allowing for easier maintenance, extensibility and reusability.