A case study of Microsoft Bing Dictionary client

1. Functional Evaluation

I downloaded the Microsoft Bing Dictionary Windows client and found at least 2 bugs.

Bug

Bug symptoms: Under the "Machine translation" module, when you type a URL such as "Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_ (linguistics)", the program does not implement the function of translating the content of the Web page, but output

"https://en. Wikipedia. Org/wiki/intonation_ (linguistics) ".

Bug Possible cause: The program does not correctly distinguish between normal text and a string that represents the URL of a Web page, or the program does not correctly go to this URL.

Bug No.2

Bug Symptoms: The buttons on the menu bar and their caption are not displayed correctly on any interface, but no problem is clicked.

Bug Possible cause: An exception occurred in the code part of the program loading the button picture, or there is an incompatibility between that part of the code and Windows 8.

2. Field Interviews

I interviewed a classmate who studied English and understood his view of the dictionary.

Q: Classmate, how long have you been learning English? Why do you want to learn English?

A: From primary school has been learning, college graduated want to go abroad, is now preparing TOEFL and GRE.

Q: What are your needs in order to learn English well?

Answer: I need to practise listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Q: Have you ever used the Microsoft Bing dictionary?

A: Not much has been used.

Q: You download one with a use.

Answer: OK.

Q: In addition to the basic search words, translation, new words of this function, as well as Bing Radio practice listening, I love to speak English practice spoken language, the word challenge to detect their own functions, you see.

A: Well. (In use ...) ）

Q: What do you think of these features?

A: Well ... It's OK. The question in the word challenge is not very good, and it is too bad compared to the true question of TOEFL and GRE. Bing Radio can also, after all, it is the original text, to my hearing some help. The spoken part is mainly helps me to practice the pronunciation, I now pronunciation still some is not very accurate, so relies on this practice spoken English is also good.

Q: What is your overall impression of the software?

A: General. Usually check the words I use more authoritative Oxford high-level dictionary, maybe later listening and speaking can use it auxiliary practice, but sure enough still can not replace the real problem.

Combined with the above interview and my usage, the software is of general quality and does not belong to the highly recommended type.

3. Software Analysis

The features of the Microsoft Bing Dictionary include new words, back words, I love to speak English, and the following are the time estimates for the implementation of these features. (according to the university graduates, 6 people cooperation is the subject)

The new word: In essence, the establishment, modification, deletion of the tree, is expected to be completed in only 1 days or so.

Recite the word: from the already established word library to extract some for the memory practice, the workload is not deep, it is expected to only 3 days or so can be completed.

Bing Radio: To achieve audio download, storage, playback, dictation, it is expected to take about 10 days.

Word Challenge: Need to store questions and answers beforehand, this work will take about 5 days, the function of generating the topic only about 1 days.

I love to speak English: Save sentences and read audio in advance, this work takes about 5 days, and it takes 1-2 days to achieve the recording function.

The advantage of the software is simple interface, no ads, compared to other similar software features more abundant. The downside is that there are some bugs that affect the user experience (as mentioned above) in the basic functionality, and the installer has mandatory bundling behavior. For a development software team, should firmly grasp the positioning of the software, that is, in order to ensure that the most basic functions of the software to improve the implementation, and then find ways to expand the software's other functions, or the cart before the horse.

4. Recommendations and Planning

Microsoft Bing Dictionary is not the only online translation tool on the market, it has a lot of competitors such as Youdao dictionary, PowerWord and so on. In order to win in the competition, a lot of work needs to be done.

The software needs to be installed before using this step. In this way, the size of the installation package and the speed of installation is one of the key points, because no user would like to install the package bloated, installation speed is also slow software. At present, some large software on the market has achieved the rapid installation, such as 360, but there is no translation software implementation. That way, if Microsoft Bing is able to install fast, then the user's first impression should be better.

With the deepening of global communication, English is no longer the only foreign language that people want to learn. Some small languages, such as Japanese, German, learning more and more people, therefore, a translation software is best to support multi-lingual search words and examples, the integration of multiple languages into the same software, so that users do not have to download different languages of the translation software, both rich software features, but also reduce the user's operational difficulty. However, not all users of the software need to query every foreign language, so the software originally downloaded contains only English, and users who require a different foreign language can choose to download other languages.

In the study of English, a large part of the group is preparing TOEFL, GRE and other English examinations, so in the function of the translation software, you can add links to some of the TOEFL, GRE test-related sites, save users to find their own website trouble.

To develop a software, for a team of 5 people, if only 4 months (16 weeks) time, can be allocated according to the following time points:

1-2 weeks, after a group discussion, determine the basic functions of software, development environment and so on.

3-10 weeks, complete the core code section of the software, 3 people completed.

For 11-12 weeks, test the core Code (console test) and fix all the found bug,5 people to test together.

13 weeks, let the group of artists design the best people design the interface style, after the panel discussion to determine the interface.

14-15 weeks, porting the code to the UI interface to test and fix the bug.

16 weeks, release the software.

A case study of Microsoft Bing Dictionary client