Remember that a successful dossier must be thought through, it is no good choosing a topic which does not allow you to achieve a minimum of 10 mastery factors, however interesting it may be - building a robotic pet dog, for example.

Aims of the existing system

Aims of the new system

Try to make your aims SMART (not, for example, "improve the ordering system")

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-constrained.

Each sample screen shows the TextFields and Buttons of the interface and has explanatory text. This is intended to give the user a clear idea of what the completed system will look like.

Prototypes could also be drawings or even semi-functional screens, such as Applets.

The method you choose will depend to some extent on the nature of the problem.

on this page: [ our user | prototype | ]

The User

In the revised approach to the dossier it is important for the project to be a real-world one with a clearly identified end user. While a shop like Fair Trade is ideal in this respect you may have problems finding something that is both suitable and appealing to you. End users could also be:

A family member who has a requirement for a domestic system (CD collection, recipe book, contact list, anti-SPAM program, technical terms spell-checker, personal diary, offline text search facility).

A colleague who wants some kind of educational system (multiple choice tester, art work appraiser (?), chemical experiment simulator, questionnaire generator, digital circuit simulator, careers advisor).

A teacher who wants a system they can use in the classroom or for administration (OHP sheet organiser, departmental book tracker, network messaging system, homework marking system, reference writing system).

It is really important for you to have meaningful interaction with the end user not just pretend to. You should aim to put this on a formal basis using the standard analysis techniques (interviews, questionnaires, observation, existing documentation, as appropriate).

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Our User

We have managed to persuade the manager of Fair Trade that she wants a system to replace the current manual system already described.

We have prepared use cases, data flow diagrams and have a sound understanding of the existing system. The functions identified in the existing system are:

• Sale of items.
• Ordering of items.
• Updating of record cards (end of day) using sales book.
• Transferring items from store to shop
• Creating new record cards
• Updating record cards (add, edit, delete)

Clearly our new system must be able to do these tasks at minimum and this will solve some of the problems identified with the existing sytem. The managers problems that a new system should solve were:

• Tracking which staff sold items.
• Tracking the sales of items over time
• Introduce a re-ordering system that ensures stocks never run out
• Tracking items by supplier

According to our SMART philosophy some of these need refinement - we have not said how we will ensure stock never runs out for example.

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Prototype

For this project I chose a PowerPoint presentation to show the user what the new system would look like and what it would do.

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Prototypes are also discussed on this page.

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