FEATURE
ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE IN POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH During the graduation ceremony of 2020, two of the Department’s master’s degree students received their degrees cum laude. Both are working mining engineers who conducted research in topics that will be of benefit to the mining engineering industry.
Identifying mine design software usability requirements Michael Neale
Design guidelines relating to mine design project management Jaco Mans The master’s degree study of Jaco Mans involved a critical investigation into design guidelines relating to mine design project management. His dissertation took the form of a prototype activity blueprint that references the detailed activities required for the various disciplines involved in a mine design study or project for each of four phases defined in the activity blueprint process.
The objective of Michael Neale’s master’s degree research was to improve the usability of mine design software to alleviate several existing concerns in the mining industry. Software developers should ideally be equipped with usability guidelines relevant to mine design software. However, there is virtually no literature that applies software usability concepts to mining or related domains, and other work in this field may not be transferable to the mining industry. This means that attempts to improve mine design software usability would either be unguided or at risk of using inappropriate guidelines.
In his research, Mans combined detailed technical checklists from other studies and projects with international codes to obtain a collective checklist that includes all the technical disciplines involved. Together, these items must meet the minimum criteria for the level of study required, while also incorporating some project management, risk management and activity blueprintspecific principles to be followed during a study or project.
A systematic literature review of mine design software formed the basis of his research on mine design software usability requirements. The review considered 128 recent publications, of which 24 were selected for further analysis. Information was extracted from each selected source based on the usability components as relayed by ISO 9241-11. Thematic analyses were performed within the components, and all but the weakest themes were interpreted as mine design software usability requirements.
The resulting activity-based blueprint would include project management principles and processes to guide project control within the financial and timeline budget. These detailed activities were garnered from all the common and less common areas of influence on a mine design study or project so that no item was left unattended. The outcome was a disciplined process, which prompted the user to consider each activity, but which allowed enough freedom to break each activity down into more relevant detail depending on the natural progression of the study or project.
The identified mine design software usability requirements were applied to an undisclosed mining material flow modelling software package, which showed that the requirements can be effective in identifying usability gaps and guiding improvements. The main use of the guidelines is to direct further usability work such as gap analyses, interviews, surveys and usability testing. The requirements produced can also be used to introduce newcomers to the nature of mine design work.
The study took a holistic approach, and involved activities that were fairly straightforward and could continue irrespective of the next decision to be taken, and without risk to prevent any potential project delays or long lead times because of manufacturing. As a result, the project could continue at a steady pace.
According to Neale, further work is required to validate the requirements from other sources. This includes expanded literature searches and non-literature sources such as workshops, interviews, surveys and support calls. The potential value-add and ease of application of the requirements should also be tested, especially in comparison with standard usability tools.
DEPARTMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING
According to Mans, this activity blueprint document covered the minimum detail to define the project to a certain maturity phase in the industry. While remaining compliant, it did not become too descriptive to allow each project to be unique.
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ANNUAL REVIEW 2020/21
