Appendix 3:Design Ideas or Design Situations

This page lists a few possible system situations that you may want to use for starting your design project. Of course, many other projects are possible. You may suggest your own project with the permission of the course instructor (not the tutorial TA).

Important: Ideal projects are ones that you personally find interesting. These projects will have users you can talk to, requires some transaction processing, and will require a modest level of design sophistication. Ideal projects will also deal with fairly simple situations - avoid overly complex domains (that rules out air-traffic control systems :-) ) and ones that will allow you access to the users and their place of usage. Ideal projects will also be something you can relate to. Look at things that you and your friends do (e.g., in part-times jobs), or that family members do (e.g., as part of their work). Also, consider non-work fields: recreation; systems for kids; education; games! Be creative! Have fun! The only blanket constraint that I have is that the system cannot be web-based. In terms of interface design web-based systems have their own unique constraints and design principles so it would simply be too difficult.

Some ideas.

Your company is about to design, build, and market a new software system based upon one of the following ideas:

A photographer with a huge set of photos in her stock library wants a system to help her track the photos (which includes adding and deleting photos) and to manage sales of them.

A digital camera company wants a system that they can give to customers. The system would be used by customers to do photo management; photo browsing; photo albums; slide shows.

A medical clinic wants to give its front line staff something that helps them manage patient requests for appointments with particular doctors.

A video store wants to provide a system that lets customers browse the inventory and for staff to check out and check in video tapes, DVD's and game rentals. (Hint: You should focus on the customer end of the system rather than the staff functions).

A bus company wants to decrease line-ups for clerks at a bus terminal. Their idea is to allow travelers to look up major route schedules, book tickets, and pay for them via a debit and card cards on the computers located in the terminal building.

A real estate company wants to let computer-knowledgeable customers browse through home listings from their homes. Their idea is that customers with Internet access can download a client program. The program lets customers indicate properties of homes they are interested in, view details of homes that fit these criteria, and select ones that they may be interested in visiting with a realtor. (This additional simplification, not having the system as web-based, makes this a viable term project for this class).

A theatre wants to develop a new ticketing system for their clerks. Through the clerks, customers order tickets for various events. The clerk responds to customer requests for information as well as actual ticket reservations and sales via the system.

A gas station wants to computerize its manual system, where attendants can use the machine to observe the pumps, to collect payment for gas and other supplies, to track special events and promotions that may be going on, to track and visualize sale and inventory information and so on.

A telephone company wants to create a dedicated screen-based telephone system for home use, where it integrates all the services now commonly found on telephone / computer / paper. The company is also looking for new features that would help them market this system as an innovative product.