Product feasibility study

In the following report we will discuss the feasibility of our product “Mr Lecture”, we will take into consideration many aspects of the product from how it would work; how it compares to any existing products on the market to if it is financially viable

Design Requirements

‘Mr Lecture’ is a brand new revision and learning service developed by RTFM Ltd. ‘Mr Lecture’ will be a website run by students and stores recorded lectures and revision material. The main feature of the website will be the ability to display recorded videos of lectures. The videos will be accompanied by other lecture material such as PowerPoint presentations and a wiki page for extra notes. The main aim of this service is to provide students with a more effective and efficient revision aid enabling those who have ‘missed a lecture’ to successfully complete units. The service will be administered through a pay system where students will be able to download each lecture in a common video format for a set fee. The lectures will be recorded either by student volunteers or willing lecturers.

The additional revision materials and wiki pages will also be available to students who do not require the video service free of charge. This will give students other benefits from other existing services such as extra notes enabling them to refine points and gain a better understanding of the subject and aid revision. The wiki pages will provide students with the opportunity to collaborate with other students attending similar courses and to help one another to further their knowledge on various topics. It will also enable them to practice sample questions so that they can refine their answers to a "model exam answer".

Mr. Lecture will also cater to disabled users, deaf, partially sighted etc. This is an important feature for the site as some users are less able and the site needs to allow all users of all abilities to learn and get the information they require. Having accessibility options for the site would make the site more attractive to potential users as people would be more likely to use the site if they know it is user friendly.

Use Case Scenarios

A first time student streaming a lecture video using ‘Mr Lecture’ for revision

A student would like to start using the Mr. Lecture site because the student wants a new way to revise for coming exams. The student has used an internet site before and the link to create a new account is easy to find. The student is presented with a registration process that requires the student to enter their university details with university HEMIS number and their personal details are noted down and a username and password are created. The student then reads and accepts the terms and conditions of the site. The student now has a new account on the site and can logon when ever required. The student now has unlimited access to unit material such as PowerPoint presentations and wiki pages for notes free of charge and or for a small fee purchase the lecture video.

The student firstly compares their notes that they made during the lecture to the wiki notes section where other students have added their own notes and views. The student then wants to purchase the lecture video so to remind them of what the lecturer had said. The student simply clicks on ‘purchase lecture video’, and then follows the on screen instructions where credit/debit card details are securely entered. The student is then provided with an overview of their purchase and the student then clicks ‘confirm purchase’. A receipt is emailed to the students email address. The student now wants to stream the video, so the student clicks play on ‘Mr Lecture’s video player. The student can play, pause, fast-forward and re-wind the lecture to suit the student. The student can now successfully use the video for revision and ace the exam.

A first time student streaming a lecture video using ‘Mr Lecture’ for a missed lecture

A student has unfortunately missed a lecture, and has heard about a new website for helping students catch up lectures called ‘Mr Lecture’. The student has used an internet site before and the link to create a new account is easy to find. The student is presented with a registration process that requires the student to enter their university details with university HEMIS number and their personal details are noted down and a username and password are created. The student then reads and accepts the terms and conditions of the site. The student now has a new account on the site and can logon when ever required. The student now has unlimited access to unit material such as PowerPoint presentations and wiki pages for notes free of charge and or for a small fee purchase the lecture video.

The student firstly reads the lecture wiki notes that other students have made and gets and idea of what happened in the lecture. The student then wants to purchase the lecture video so to view the lecture. The student simply clicks on ‘purchase lecture video’, and then follows the on screen instructions where credit/debit card details are securely entered. The student is then provided with an overview of their purchase and the student then clicks ‘confirm purchase’. A receipt is emailed to the students email address. The student now wants to stream the video, so the student clicks play on ‘Mr Lecture’s video player. The student can play, pause, fast-forward and re-wind the lecture to suit the student. The student has now caught up with the lecture and can think about revision.

An existing member using ‘Mr Lecture’

A user would like to view the video of a lecture they missed, but they have not paid for the video. The student logs in using their username and password, finds the lecture under the unit and clicks ‘Purchase video’ the student can now pay with existing credit/debit card details or enter new details. Once the payment has been confirmed the video is now available.

Existing member viewing PowerPoint lecture slides

A student would go about viewing PowerPoint lecture slides in a similar manner to videos, from a unit/lecture page he can click view slides. The slides will be displayed and can go about learning.

An existing member performing a search

A member would like to easily find a lecture they want to catch up on. The could try and browse to the lecture but cant remember exactly where it is. That is where the search menu comes in. The student can enter a phrase, part of a phrase and the site will perform a search and return lectures pertaining to the search criteria. The student can then click on the results to be directly taken to the page with the information on.

User using Wiki lecture notes section

User enters site, and navigates to required lecture. Wiki section opens on the right frame with the lecture slides on the bottom frame. User reads current notes and clicks the page to add to current notes. Clicking the page brings up font control and text area.

Lecturer getting feedback about their unit

A lecturer might want to see what people are saying about their unit, usually the feedback forms are used at the end of the unit, but that only helps students out in the next year. What the lecturer could do is logon to ‘Mr Lecture’ and view the feedback students have left for the unit. This information could be used for the lecturer to make the lectures much better for the students.

Administrator uploading a video

A student that has recorded a lecture would like to add the video to ‘Mr Lecture’. The student must first have the video in a format the site supports. The student would then use the admin control panel to go to the ‘add video’ section. From here the student can choose what Unit/Course/Lecture page to add the video to. The student then clicks upload and the video is uploaded to the site for others to view.

Administrator updating content

This is done similar to deleting, as when the admin is on the tools page, they will be presented with options to update existing content. In the context of a video for example they will have to upload a new one in order to update it.

Design Analysis

Comparison to existing products

Mr Lecture is a revision and study aid for University Students. From research we have discovered that there are products that have similar aspects to Mr Lecture. Some websites offer prerecorded lectures available to everyone that are either free or available for a price. Mr Lecture however is a dedicated site for specific Universities and departments. There are also websites that offer revision aids already offered by Universities, our aim to to take aspects from these sites and make Mr Lecture the only place a student needs to revise from. Concept diagrams have been developed to show how Mr is expected to look like and also show how user friendly the site will be.

Princeton University New Jersey, USA (http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/)

This University in the United States of America has provided some lecture material in a video format on the department website. Although these are not University study lectures or specific course material they are University events where they have had visitors come to speak to students or faculty. They have although been provided in a similar way to how our service would be provided to our students.

The lectures on this example have just been listed by date order and do not contain much information in the title except the main credentials like the Lecturer and the title, there is no description. One aspect which I do see available is there is a selection of formats on some of the lectures to view. This provides some flexibility on the user as not all hosts will have support for all video codecs. There lecture page as shown from the link above is just a long archive of all the videos which I personally think is very unsuitable for our concept as they would ideally be grouped into the Unit/module and then which session, with adjacent lecture notes and slides available from the lecturer on the site.

Princeton 1

Freevideolectures.com – “Bringing free Education to Everyone” (http://freevideolectures.com/)

This website allows the user to study on-line using free, provided lecture videos. On the site there are many different topics to choose from and each seem to go down into some great detail. I do not see however the reliability of these sources and personally would not trust this website with my studies. The lectures do not seem to be specific to any course like ours would be and just seems to be on the specific topics which you would choose. Our site would be dedicated and directly linked to the study material which you choose; following your specific course while in comparison to this website it just picks the subject and the topic and learn from there.

The website itself has a few advertisements on which I always don't like the look of and clutters up the page. This does not also help to the trust of the website material. I feel that the look and layout of the website for its purpose is not very professional. Some other useful areas of their website is the comments page and Blog section which is more like a community of other students, professional bodies along with members of the public where there is a thread for problems where others can put across their views, comments and answers. Although the content of this website is not held by themselves and is only linked to other sources. For example, when I selected 'CMOS Design' it took me to an external link showed below, which is where all links take the user to external sites.

Princeton 1

Academic Earth (http://academicearth.org/)

This service provides lectures from top world scholars and academics. It seems that when a University in its list gets a special visit lecturer they record it and post it onto this website. This includes Princeton like above and another 5 American Universities. The site allows the user to rate the videos themselves and also the speaker. This allows the visitors to choose from the best rated scholars and see their work. They bring quality video lecture content to an individual place to provide freely to the public a high-class education. To use their website you must register and login to view all the content which is provided in a couple of different methods. You can search for specific content to view, you can select the videos by subject or you can browse the individual lecturers videos. You can create play lists of various different videos to view in sequence. What is good about this example is that its very professional and only shows relevant content to that website. Its very clearly laid out and the site is very easily to navigate around. I do notice that you can link it to your 'Facebook' account, there is a Widget at the bottom of the page where you can share what you have been watching with your friends. You can subscribe to RSS feeds which can allow you another method of updates to the site with the new content. In our example having this feature could be useful to share with class/group mates, allowing a good communal form of communication.

Princeton 1

Examopedia(https://victory.port.ac.uk/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct)

Manish Malik, a lecturer at the University of Portsmouth has introduced a Wiki revision aid website called examopedia. Example exam questions are posted onto to examopedia and students login and collaborate answers onto the Wiki page. Students or lecturers can expand on any given answers leading to students working together to give each other ideas and to create the perfect answers.

Although examopedia does not consist of any video or lecture notes, it is still a useful tool for revision. 'Mr Lecture' will use similar concepts for collaborating between members. Lecture notes can be posted on each lecture so to expand or simply any details on the lecture. This will mean any confused students will be able to understand and complicated aspects of the lecture and any students who want to expand on the lecture will be able to give each other ideas.
'Mr Lecture' also differs with examopedia because 'Mr Lecture' will charge for some aspects of the service. 'Mr Lecture' will be a lot more user friendly and offering many different features not just the Wiki function.

Victory(www.port.ac.uk/victory)

Victory is a website that contains lecture and course material for the University of Portsmouth courses. Lectures can use Victory as they wish. It can be used to post lecture slides, coursework details, course announcements, previous exam papers and even more advanced features for specific requirements such as on line logs and mail features. Victory is a free service but is only available to students at the University of Portsmouth.

Victory

Students currently use Victory to acquire lecture slides to aid their revision. 'Mr Lecture' adds a new dimension to this feature by adding in the lecture videos and lecture notes on top of the slides. Students will have a choice on the material they use and how they use it. 'Mr Lecture's purpose built features are not as flexible as Victorys' features because Victory allows lectures to put what features they want onto the site. But, 'Mr Lecture' is a revision tool and is not used for projects and coursework.

Vctory

Studyzone.com(studyzone.com)

Studyzone.com is a free study aid website available to all kinds of students. It allows students to share their own work and browse upload work and videos. It is a easy website to use but only has content on some courses and not much at University level. The problem is that the site is aimed at students from GCSE to University, Mostly A-level and GCSE students have contributed to the website. This shows there is a massive gap in the market for 'Mr Lecture'. Studyzone is used for revision for exams and help on coursework and projects, 'Mr Lecture' uses similar aspects to help aid students in revision but is only aimed at revision rather than coursework.
Studyzone tries to be up to date and user friendly to students by using bright colours and good graphics. It is very easy to use and is useful to students who do use it.

Study Zone

Concept Designs

Logo

The logo features an eye catching emblem, the Mortar Board against the website name. This forms a memorable symbol, which can be easilly recognised aiding brand recognission. The slogan below provides a subtle explination to the websites name as it is a play on words (missed a lecture?).

Home Page

The main feature of the home page and the website design is the striking contrast between colours on the page providing visible seperation between content and navigation. Research into website design and layout has shown that a visitor to your page makes a judgement about its worth within 10 seconds of visiting. During those first glances it is necessary to draw the users attention to the key points such as navigation and content. This is achieved by seperating the main navigation from the rest of the page and placing it at the top where the user would expect it. The large icons serving as bullet points highlight the key features of the website; buying lectures, subscribing and colaboration with other students. A large image of a lecture hall draws the visitors attention and further emphasises the type of content. A column containing testimonials from lecturers and students shows visitors what people think of the site and is good advertising. The main content of the home page is the news section. The new section would be used to update users of the site and guests any new features and new lectures that are available.

Lecture Page

The lecture page itself will feature a title detailing what unit the lecture is from, the date it was held on, and the title of the lecture. Below this will be the video of the lecture along with the slides. There will also be a wiki for students to take notes on the lecture and share their thoughts with others. There my also be further colaboration via IM but this is undesided at this point.

Key Cost Drivers

After much discussion RTFM Ltd have decided on the following key cost drivers that will directly effect the feasibility of the project.

The key cost drivers are:
1.Website Design
2.Bandwidth/Hosting Costs
3.Content Creation
4.Moderation

Website Design

The website design will initially be the cost of the man hours that it will take to design the website layout and presentation which will include the design of the overall brand image of the product. The services of the site will then have to be created using an appropriate dynamic content language such as PHP or ASP, this will include services that the user will use and also those needed to maintain and update the site and it’s content.

The website is a key cost driver as the monetary cost of this will directly effect the initial start up costs of the product that will have to be recovered by the content subscription systems of the product which may effect the product’s profitability for some time.

RTFM Ltd propose to keep the website design costs as low as possible and perhaps even nothing by using the design expertise of members of the product design team. Doing this will remove the need of contracting third parties to either do the entire website design or separate companies to handle each part of the design which would create massive fees of thousands of pounds that these services cost. Doing it ourselves also allows us to have greater control over exactly how the product functions and how it appears and prevents the leaking of any of the features of our innovative site that could be stolen.

The website design directly effects the viability of the product as if it’s cost is too high the initial start up fees of the site may not be viable without outside investment which might not be readily available in the current economic climate. Also if the cost is too high we may have to increase the price of service to recover the costs of the website design which could turn away prospective customers.

Hosting and Bandwidth Cost

There are a few separate costs due to our web based delivery method that are overall related to the hosting and delivery of the content to the users over the internet. These costs are content hosting, bandwidth and server rental.

It is a key cost driver as this is one of our main overheads for the product and is one that we will always have whilst the product is live however we will take steps to reduce it over the lifetime of the product.

RTFM Ltd will keep these costs down by initially using free or very cheap virtual hosting that will reduce the cost of the overhead but these services normally provide low amounts of bandwidth, content hosting and computing power so as the service grows we will either have to purchase a more expensive hosting package or go with a collocation option where we own our own server hardware but place it in a data centre. The cost of these upgrades would be covered by the increase in user subscriptions that the need to upgrade was caused by.

This affects the cost of the service to the user and our profit margin as we will have to keep the final product price within a range that the customer will pay but also one that covers our overheads and also make us a profit although any profit may initially be small. Obviously the larger the overheads the higher the price of the service will be and/or smaller the profit will be. If we choose a cheaper bandwidth and hosting package that don’t meet our needs the user experience of the site will be degraded as content delivery may be slower and some of the multimedia aspects of the site may have to be removed which would greatly effect the quality of the service. This lower quality of service could affect customer opinion of the product and could reduce the amount of customers that the product gets.

Content Creation

The content creation is the main part of the site as it is the core product we are offering. The content is what the resulting consumer demand will be driven by so the better the content that is created for the website, the more user that will be drawn to the site. There will be a wiki for notes on the site, more users online and using the site the better the wiki content will be therefore creating a greater interest in the site.
To keep the cost low the introduction of a royalty scheme where the up loader of content would get royalties from the sale of the content they have uploaded. This would give users incentive to create good recordings of their lectures and ensure we would not be overspending on content creation. Programs to automate the content generation could be created or purchased for ease of use for the content creators. For instance there could be programs to detect slide changes on the video and automatically change the slide that is currently being show on the frame showing the slides. A handwriting recognition program could also be used to scan the notes the content creator took in their lecture allowing them to be the first entries onto the wiki part of the site without them having to be rewritten onto a computer.

The Quality of lecture videos and other learning material is of the highest importance as this is our product, Adding incentive for the up loaders to want to upload high quality material and making the process of uploading a easy and pleasurable experience for the users generating content will be key to make Mr. Lecture a viable product.

Moderation

Moderation is needed for the wiki pages of the site to stop people adding and editing incorrect or malicious material onto the site. Also as the uploaded lectures will be from users of the site a moderator would be needed to ensure the content is what it is said to be. Either case would be degrading to the quality and popularity of the site.
As with all administration it would take the cost in time of the administrators time taken to review material on the site. This cost could be done by traditional wiki style by letting all users modify the content for each other. However, problems do arise when false material is posted. Members may be revising from incorrect material and would affect the professionalism of the website. A method to avoid this would be to give the users a preview clip before paying for the video.
The alternative would be to have someone paid to administrate and moderate the site, this would come at a cost and could be done proportionate to the amount of modification required allowing someone to do this as a part time occupation. It would make for a better site but perhaps the time and cost of the moderation would detract from other resources that could be invested in.
A fair balance would have to be created so the administrators moderation would be kept to minimum and users generally moderated the site by themselves a users rating scheme we believe would also benefit the site in the way that a user would know whom has put the material onto the site and be able to see the users rating and be able to judge the quality of the material by the user who has uploaded the content.

Conclusion

After conducting our feasibility study we feel that we have a very strong, unique and viable product that will be a great learning aid to the students of Portsmouth and hopefully eventually the world.