Project report requirements

Transcription

1 ECA Project Booklet This booklet describes the individual project report that you will need to prepare in fulfilment of the examinable component of the course. It is called the examinable component because the procedures for marking and monitoring it are those that apply to examinations rather than those for continuous assessment (such as the CMAs that you are doing as part of this course). However, unlike an exam, you will undertake the project during the final few weeks of the course. Please note that the submission cut-off date for the ECA Project of XXX is absolute. If you are likely to be away near the cut-off date then your only recourse is to submit your project early. If you do not submit by 12 midnight on the cut-off date, your work will not count for assessment purposes and as a consequence you will not be able to pass the course. In exceptional circumstances an extension can be granted by the University, but it must be applied for BEFORE the cut-off date. Details of how to apply are in the leaflet Information for students submitting an ECA, which can be found in the TT280 News conference. The goal of the project is for you to demonstrate what you have learnt about the design and development of web applications. It is an academic exercise in that you will not be required to build a functioning web site or upload pages for review. However, facilities have been provided for you to create and upload pages so that you can discuss your design ideas with other students.

2 Project report requirements In your role as Team Leader for a member of a small web design consultancy you have been approached by a client to help with the design of a new web application for the sale of very high quality stainless steel cooking utensils. The client is a family business based in the Midlands, whose traditional markets have been the smaller high-street ironmongers. In recent years the client has seen the number of retail outlets falling and is seeking alternative marketing options. The business has investigated various forms of direct retailing and considers that the WWW offers the greatest potential for its product line. The market research the client has undertaken suggests that 85% of the company s products are purchased by women in the age range Men account for less than 5% of purchases. Product prices are at the upper end of the range and so the customer base is expected to be dominated by the professional middle-class. The company is over 400 years old, and during this time it has collected numerous engravings, paintings, photographs and documents of its manufacturing processes and working environment. The collection is currently displayed in the company offices, but the company would like to make it more accessible to scholars and schools as a resource for study, and believes that a web site would help to achieve this goal. Once the site has been developed it will be maintained by the client. There is no web development experience within the company at present, but it anticipates training one of the designers who works on its printed product catalogue. Your brief is to produce a two-part report that serves two audiences; both the client and your colleagues at the consultancy. Part One: The Client 40 marks In the first instance you should prepare a draft report for the client s Marketing Director (a maximum of 1000 words) in which you set out and illustrate the options for this web application, based on the interview transcript provided as Appendix A. Part One of your report should address the following issues: how visitors find their way around the client s site; what the structure looks like and why you have chosen this approach; an overview of the tools that a variety of visitors to the web site might reasonably be expected to have on their system, and the implications of this for your design; preliminary designs for four templates that could be used throughout the web site. These templates should be used to illustrate your design decisions to the Marketing Director. 1 Home page illustrating your layout and use of stylesheets 2 A representative example of a single item product page to display photograph, product description, price and catalogue number, and including navigational elements indicating where this fits in the overall catalogue 3 A user survey form to capture individual user feedback about the site in terms of both design and function 4 A representative example of a single history page to display images and descriptive text showing a clear relationship to other history pages within the site. To find out more, visit our website at 2

3 The template designs should incorporate CSS style elements using a separate stylesheet. You should not assume that the four pages you have been asked to design are the only pages that will be used for the site. The templates are the means by which you will illustrate your design ideas to the client s Marketing Director. One or more of your template files may be selected for validation against the W3C XHTML 1.x validator using the Transitional DTD. Failure to achieve validation will result in loss of marks. Templates will not be validated against the Accessibility Guidelines. Please note that the word count for this part of the report does not include any text used in your four template designs. In addition, although the transcript of an interview conducted between the marketing director of the company and an information architect in Appendix A touches on the topic of hosting the web application, you are not required to address this issue in your report. Part Two: Colleagues 50 marks For the second part of your report (a maximum of 2000 words) you are asked to produce a more detailed explanation of your design for your in-house colleagues. Here you should concentrate on explaining and justifying your design choices for the client s site. In order to get good marks for this part you need to ensure that you explain what the design issues are and how your design addresses them. For example, you need to explain what each term means, what sorts of problem arise, why it might be of concern for this company s web site, and how your design addresses any issues you have identified. This part of the report should address the following: the standards you are proposing for the preparation of all HTML and CSS documents; your proposals for handling cross-browser compatibility issues; how your design will address issues of usability and accessibility; an explanation for your choice of the overall site structure of the proposed web site, including the catalog structure and location of history pages. You should include an overall site structure diagram; how your design will assist with site maintenance. Overall structure and presentation 10 marks An additional 10 marks are for overall structure and presentation of your report. Please note that your answer must be written in multiple sentences. Bullet points will not be acceptable. To help you with this aspect of the project we have provided some notes and guidance on report writing. These can be downloaded from the TT280 web site. Further notes Do note that you are not being asked to comment on the likely success of this site. The client has already made the decision to invest in this development as an experiment in direct selling. Whilst you are not expected to develop any of the shopping applications, you should consider the navigational requirements to support a user purchasing one or more products as they browse through the site. Although your report will be reviewed electronically, it should be written so that it can be printed with black ink on white paper (i.e. don t rely on colour elements within the report). Please don t enable macros in your report, either. As graphics can take an inordinate amount of time to produce, and this is not a course about graphic design you are discouraged from creating any graphic images to include in your web page templates; instead you should create To find out more, visit our website at 3

4 placeholders and where applicable, use the graphics which will be provided in the TT280 conference. The survey page will be validated against the URL how to use this with forms is explained in week 9 of the course. The following rules are intended to make it easier for the marker to review your work. Please don t ignore them or you could lose marks. Your templates should be created as four separate HTM or HTML files. The templates must be designed to be viewable within a single subdirectory. You may include one additional file for a CSS stylesheet. Each file should be named as follows: Report Home page Template product page User survey page Template history page CSS stylesheet xxxxx_rp.doc xxxxx_hp.htm xxxxx_cp.htm xxxxx_sp.htm xxxxx_tp.htm xxxxx_st.css where xxxxx is your OU computer account identifier (e.g. abc12). If you require additional files to support your submission, you should use a similar naming convention to that given above. Your site structure diagram should be embedded in the report. Whilst your submission will essentially be a report in two parts, the list of issues given should not necessarily be used as the section headings. You will therefore need to think carefully about how you structure your report and how you bring in the various issues mentioned for the two different audiences: the client and your colleagues. What to submit Your two-part report, submitted as a Word 97/2000 or RTF formatted file, including a diagram of the proposed structure of the web site, clearly showing the location of each of the four templates you have designed within the overall structure; Four HTM (or HTML) files representing the four template designs; One CSS stylesheet, as a CSS file. If you decide that your site will utilise frames you may submit the additional files necessary to create the framesets using the naming convention given above. How to submit Your documents, ie. the report, the HTM (or HTML), site structure diagram and CSS file(s) should be combined into one single zipped archive file. Do not convert the zip file to a self-extracting archive file (.exe). Further details are provided in the booklet Using the Electronic TMA System. TT280 follows the generic rules for ETMA submission. Please read this booklet carefully and make sure you are familiar both with the ETMA system and how to zip files in good time for your submission. Experience on previous presentations has shown that you should not leave this until the last moment. To locate the ETMA service go to your StudentHome, and find the link under 'Your Course Record' for TT280. To find out more, visit our website at 4

5 Please note that there is no mechanism for a marker to determine whether you have submitted all the files you intended, or that the files submitted contain any data. So please take the time to double-check everything you submit. One way to test whether you have included everything is to create your Zip file and then copy it to another folder on your hard disk. Unzip the file and review the web pages from the new folder. You may resubmit documents, up to the cut-off date, if you think something may have gone wrong. Viewing your pages The facility Homepage on your FirstClass client desktop allows you to upload your web pages for others to view. For details on how to use this application please use the Help facility on your FirstClass desktop and look under publishing to the web. Marking criteria The following indicates how marks will be awarded for the various elements of your report. Part One (40 marks) How visitors find their way around the client s site 5 Overview of the tools that customers might use 5 Templates Home page 7.5 Catalogue page 7.5 Survey page 7.5 History page 7.5 Part Two (50 marks) Explanation and justification of standards proposed 10 Explanation and justification of proposals for handling crossbrowser 10 compatibility issues Explanation and justification of proposals for usability, accessibility 10 and navigation Explanation of the proposed structure and diagram of the web site 10 design Explanation and justification of proposals for site maintenance 10 Overall structure and presentation of the report 10 Total marks 100 To find out more, visit our website at 5

6 Appendix A What follows is a transcript of a question-and-answer session held between the marketing director (MD) and an information architect (IA). The goal of the session was to try to identify the company s thinking behind the proposed web application. What are your short-term goals for the new web site? MD: The main goal is to learn something about this new technology as applied to direct selling of our product range. Traditionally we ve sold to small shops and one or two of the big London department stores, but most of our experience is with long-standing customers. But their numbers are falling as they find it too difficult to compete with the big supermarkets, so we need new outlets. We ve tried the big chains ourselves, but they regard our product line as too expensive for their customer-base. So one option for us is direct selling to the end customer via the Web. This is very much a trial and if things don t work we will write off the cost as experience. We re a conservative bunch here, steeped in the family history of pots and pans. We use IT to support the business operations and we use internally and with a few of our customers. But to be honest, few of my generation here use the Web much, although my children do. What are the longer term goals; do they differ much? MD: If this trial is a success, and we ve yet to decide how we measure success, then yes they do. We know that a big chunk of our sales are bought as wedding presents, so we thought about creating one of those wedding registry services where the couple can list what they want and relatives can come and buy it. This might then take us into broadening our product-base and reselling other companies products, as long as the image is consistent with our customerbase. We ve also thought about some form of order-tracking service so that a customer can view when their items were dispatched and when they should be delivered. We might even allow them to book a delivery date. What sort of budget are we talking about? MD: I ve been given Board approval of 100,000 for the trial. No one is quite sure what that will buy us, so you ll need to come back with some plans. More may be available or we ll have to reduce our expectations. That sum excludes any capital equipment because we don t want to run this trial on our own equipment. We re looking to you to advise on hosting services. What are your thoughts about the audience for the site? MD: As I mentioned, this is very much a trial of direct marketing to customers who would otherwise have gone to a large department store. In simple terms, 85% of purchases are made by women who would be classed as professional. The site won t be used for our existing outlets, so there will be no business-tobusiness activity. This is for direct sales only. The other element is this social-history part of the site. We ve a great collection of pictures, photographs and documents that tell the story of the company since the early part of the industrial revolution. It has been suggested to us that the material we have, properly displayed, could bring in visitors who would then learn about our products. We ve digitized most of the documents and images already because we ve used them in other promotional campaigns. Make sure I give you a copy of the pamphlet we ve produced for local schools. Why will people come to your site? MD: I suppose that links in with the audience. They come to buy our products or they come to browse the company history. We don t want to mix the messages of the site. So no job adverts, no quizzes, no animations. We might agree to a To find out more, visit our website at 6

7 few links on the social-history side. What tasks do you expect these visitors to be able to perform? MD: At present we want to limit the options to browsing the catalogue of products, which come in various family sets; visitors buy a product or set from the same family, and check when they are likely to be despatched. They need to give us information about delivery address, a telephone contact number in case something goes wrong, an so we can confirm dispatch date, and their preferred delivery date. We can t guarantee the delivery date, that s in the hands of the delivery company, but we do pass on the information we ve been given. We also want to learn from our visitors, so there must be a means whereby they can comment and give us feedback on the site and the services it offers. This will allow us to gather some data to measure the overall success of the venture. What types of content should and shouldn t be part of the site? MD: I ve already mentioned that this site is not for our existing reseller base, it s for direct sales. It s also not for internal use since we have some reasonable tools for keeping everyone informed; after all, we re not that big yet. We don t want to become a history portal either. The documents we have are very specific and almost represent a site on their own, but then the information wouldn t have a context. To find out more, visit our website at 7