Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom and http://blogs.intel.com

Microsoft Innovation Lab in Cairo (CMIC) is a Microsoft group representing the company interest in applied research and development initiatives in the Middle East and Africa. CMIC projects are initiated and self directed by the staff and are measured by their success in producing new concepts, economic and business value and ultimately in technical transfer into Microsoft products and services.

The American University in Cairo (AUC) was founded 90 years ago and is major contributor to the social, political and cultural life of the Arab Region. It is a vital bridge between East and West, linking Egypt and the region to the world through scholarly research, partnerships with academic and research institutions, and study abroad programs. An independent, nonprofit, apolitical, non-sectarian and equal opportunity institution, AUC is fully accredited in Egypt and the United States.

The requested service consisted of two main parts: designing a suitable user experience for the product prototype, and implementing the design using .NET technologies. Even though OpenCraft does not possess .NET skills, we were still able to win the contract by proposing a solution whereby OpenCraft would perform the UX work, and outsource the .NET development to a partner. We agreed to conduct the project over several 6-months iterations, progressively refining the prototype each time.

In order to ensure proper information flow among the three parties (CMIC, OpenCraft and our .NET partner quTIP, we built a project management information system that would serve as team communication and collaboration tool, using Drupal CMS.

Based on meetings with CMIC, we designed a first draft of the user experience. We then conducted a special type of usability study called Pluralistic Walkthrough whereby random representatives from the target user groups would evaluate a paper-based simulation of the system. Their feedback allowed us to refine the user interface and desired features to a point where we were confident of building a system that would be desirable. We then converted the designs into richly-annotated wireframes that were used by quTIP as requirements to build the actual prototype.