Assignment 8
Chapter Exercise Question 1. The goal of system design is to build a system that is effective, reliable and maintainable. A system is reliable if it handles input errors, processing errors hardware failures, or human mistakes. A system is maintainable if it is flexible, scalable and easily modified. A system is effective if it supports business requirements and meets user needs. For a successful design you need to think like user, anticipate future needs, and provide flexibility. 2. Industry leader IBM believes that the best interfaces are the ones that users do not even notice, they make sense because they do what users expect them to do. 3. There are seven habits of successful interface designers. IT professional have different view about interface design, however, most agree that good designs depend on seven basic principles. The interface designer must understand the underlying business function and how the system supports individual, department and enterprise goal. A well-designed interface can help users learn a new system rapidly and be more productive. A system analyst should understand user experience, knowledge and skill levels. From a user’s viewpoint, the interface is the most critical part of the system design because it is where he or she interacts with the system. Interface designers should focus on usability of the interface and invite feedback from the users. Lastly you should document everything, all screen designs for later use by programmers. 4. The eight main rules of user interface design: Rule 1: Create an interface that is easy to learn and use, Rule 2: Enhance user productivity, Rule 3: provide users with help and feedback, Rule 4: Create an attractive layout and design, Rule 5: Enhance the interface, Rule 6: Focus on data entry screens, Rule 7: Use validating rules and Rule 8: Reduce input volume. I would ranks these with Create a user interface that is easy to learn first because you need an interface that people will use, then Create an attractive layout, to grab the user’s attention. Then provide user feedback, then enhance the productivity so you can do more with the interface, then enhance the interface. Then continue to focus on data entry screens, uses validation rule to make sure everything is the way it should be and finally reduce input volume. 5. Input technology has changed dramatically in recent years, Business are using the new technology to speed up the input process, reduce cost and capture data forms. For example, the traditional keyboard evolved to body motion detection and now is trying to emerge into brain-computer interface (BCI). 6. Input mask is a template or pattern that restricts data entry and prevents error. One way to reduce input errors is to eliminate unnecessary data entry. A data validation rule improve quality by testing the data and rejecting any entry that fails to meet specified conditions. There are eight types of validation rules. These validation rules are important because it is the best defense against incorrect data. 7. A detail report produces one or more lines of output for each record processed, a detail can be quite lengthy. A summary report is list of the total and not the detail of everything included in the total. An exception report displays only those records that meet specific condition(s). Exception report are useful when the user wants information only on records that might require action. 8. The main principles of a source document design is the heading zone, which contains the company name and/or logo, the title and number of the form. Then the control zone contains code, the instruction zone has instructions for complete forms. The body zone usually takes up at least half of the space on the form and contain caption and area for entering variable data. Then there is the total zone and finally the authorization zone which contains any required signatures. 9. One way to reduce input volume is to only input necessary data. Do not input a data item unless it is needed by the system. And another way to reduce data is use codes. Codes are shorter that the data they represent, and coded input can reduce data entry time. 10. In a modular design, you create individual components, called modules, which connect to higher-level program or process. One type of prototyping is system prototyping which produces a full-featured, working model of the information system that meets all requirements and is ready for implementation because the model is “on track” for implementation. Another type of prototyping is design prototyping or otherwise known as throwaway prototyping. In design prototyping system analyst use design prototyping to verify user requirements after the prototype is discarded and implementation is continued. The end product of design prototyping is a user-approved model that documents and benchmarks the feature of the finished system.
Discussion topics 1. I can understand the hassle of maintain source documents because sometimes it feels like a waste of time to fill out papers when you could be doing something more productive than papers. However, I believe there is a purpose for documentation because gives people to review to see how you did the process, it shows others how to do the process as well and what can be improved. 2. I think the arguments are valid. Some users really don’t know what they want and they don’t know information systems. Listening to the users can feel like a marry-go-round because the users might want lots of reports but are they really going to look at it. I agree with the statements but I would still do my best to give the users what they want. 3. For the information delivery, I would use an internet-based information delivery because that would be the best way to reach all the technicians since they all travel to different places. The output would need to be portable because once again the techs travel. 4. I don’t think that user interfaces should be restrictive. Some people do know what they are doing and can figure things out more than just exit out of windows and logging on to the internet. I think there should be more for the user to discover so they don’t get bored and stop using the interface.