{"id":2559,"date":"2015-03-05T13:15:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T11:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webcodegeeks.com\/?p=2559"},"modified":"2015-03-02T14:36:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T12:36:04","slug":"prototypes-event-scheduler-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webcodegeeks.com\/asp-net\/prototypes-event-scheduler-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Prototypes for my event scheduler project"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written a lot about prototypes since starting my event scheduler project<\/a>, but I didn\u2019t go in deep about why I was doing it, so here is it. In short, there are many unknowns in my project, both technical and product-wise, and I don\u2019t want to go too far in a direction without knowing if it will work since my time is limited. Problems can still crop up but a few good prototypes about the harder parts will give me a good idea of what to watch out for.
\n\"ProblemsBeforeProduction\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This concept of prototyping is taken from Extreme Programming (XP) practices and they call it a Spike. It is meant to be a technical exploration of a concept to reduce technical risk, which is exactly what I\u2019m looking for.<\/p>\n

In my case, I\u2019m at ease with building web applications in ASP.NET MVC with jQuery so I don\u2019t need to explore further on that front. Given that, there are two big areas that I\u2019m aware of and that I want to explore:<\/p>\n

Real-time updates<\/strong>
\nSince the software will be used to adjust schedules in real-time, I\u2019ll need to investigate the best way to show modifications directly on the schedule without refreshing the whole page. This is necessary for a good user experience when multiple users will be working on the same schedule.<\/p>\n

I probably won\u2019t code support for multiple users right away, but I want to learn a bit more about what\u2019s involved in managing real-time and what are the impact on the client-side code so I can at least consider it in my design.<\/p>\n

SignalR is pretty much the default for ASP.NET MVC projects so I\u2019ll probably go with this My experience last week when I built my database<\/a> made me wary about going against the logical choice for a framework if I want to maximize my time.<\/p>\n

Interacting with sessions<\/strong>
\nInteracting with the sessions of an event is a major part of the application, so I wanted to prototype the UI for this with as little code as possible. The point for this prototype is to validate if the ideas that I had while working on my mockup makes sense and can be implemented. Also, given that the application is meant to be used while the event is going on, it needs to be easy to use on a tablet. I already spoke about this prototype last week since I started by building a basic data model so I had data to interact with. I completed it this week, integrating the following elements of the UI :<\/p>\n