Students Self-Service Website for Mobile Devices
Students’ Self-Service Website for Mobile Devices
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1.0 Information Gathering
1.1 The purpose and goals of the mobile self-service.The purpose and goals of mobile self service web system is to offer suitable solution for students to access personal and course associated materials. The self service system is to make this possible by means of design and implementation of the service. The service is to make use of user friendly human computer interface that will permit the students to use the web system with ease. The system is to run on iPhone, iPad, Droid, Blackberry and other mobile devices in the process of accessing the web service system by the students at Strayer University. To reach the target goal, the system is to use appropriate design strategies and other approaches like prototyping in order to successfully implement the mobile web system which can be maintained for prospect growth.
1.2 The target audience
The audience in this case includes the university administration staff that has requested for the development of this system and which will be responsible for overseeing the implementation process. Students are the second group of audience who are expected to be the major users of the system.
1.3 The audience needs and wants
The audience needs a self service system that meets the attributes of a good web system. They will require user friendly system that is easy to learn and understand. They will also require a system with better user interface, that is, an attractive interface that is flexible in terms of navigation using command such as back and forward. The audience will also need a system that is scalable and available to enable them to access course related materials and other individual information at will with minimal down time (Khan, 2012).
They will also need an interactive user interface that is simple in such a way that it is not overcrowded for visibility purposes. The audience who are also users in this instance will in addition require graphical user interface with simple commands and icons that are easy to remember. They will also need an interface that allows proper flow of control between human and machine process. Also needed is the system with high quality of output and high throughput in addition to good speed of performance in terms of response time (Khan, 2012)
Other human performance needs include reliability in terms of low rate and type of errors. The system should also take shorter time to learn by the audience, low frequency of reference to documentation, high rate of user or human retention of commands overtime and transfer of training. The audience also needs explanation from the system in case of any error during usage. The self service web system should also have good internal interaction styles in the form of restricted and open features. Restricted features include question and answer dialogue boxes, menus and forms while open features comprises of commands, natural language and direct manipulations (Khan, 2012).
1.4 Resources required in achieving the desired output.
The resources needed comprises of hardware and software resources, human resources, data and financial resources. The hardware resources include laptop or desktop computers to be used for coding and documenting the system. The laptop can also be used for data collection from the field given that it is portable. The laptop can also be used to access the developed web system. Other hardware devices are iPhones, iPads, Blackberry and other mobile phones to be used for interfacing with the developed software and for accessing the completed web system.
The software resources comprises of application software such as word processing, programming language, other web development tools and a stable operating system. The word processing will be used in typing the user documentation part of the system. Programming languages and other web tools will be useful in the implementation of the web mobile system through the coding process. The stable operating system is also required to control all operations and other software to be used in the computer for system implementation.
The human resources necessary in this case comprises of skilled programmers and the university top administration. The programmers will have the responsibility of coding the already designed system into software equivalent. The University top administration will be responsible for overseeing the entire process of design and implementation by acting as a catalyst in the process of change. Other human resources are users who are students in this case who will be very useful in the user acceptance testing process of the system.
Data is another major resource that will be required for successful implementation of this system. The data will help the analyst to determine program and system specification such as input, output and processing operations that relates inputs and outputs to give the expected output information. The data will be gathered from users of the system (students) and university staffs with the main aim of determining what the users exactly want the system to have in terms of functional requirements. The collection of this data can be conducted by use of methodologies such as interviews, questionnaires, observations or a combination of the best two methodologies that will appear more economical. The data will also be analyzed and used to design the system in terms of interface design, data design, algorithm design and component level design.
2.0 Design Strategy
2.1 The design of the Website for mobile devices
The design for the design and development of this self service system will cover responsive technology versus mobile applications interlinks with other networks and web services in the world of Google. This includes the adoption of embedded data approaches depending on specifications.. The design and development will also embrace a number of aspects which include content management system, provision of relationships and interconnections with both social and public services. It will also include the re-use of information from different sources (Pastore, 2012).
The design strategy will also use other aspects to be taken into an account. Some of these aspects include structuring information of various kinds by using general mark up languages and web languages to be processed,, enriched, re-used and rendered. Next aspect is the implementation of a simple work flow for content production and publishing. Another aspect is the aggregation of information from different sources as well as embedding web applications and links to social sites. Next is the integration of several web services that exist as public interfaces and offered by various enterprises such as Google and its applications like the Google maps, calendar and others (Pastore, 2012).
The design strategy also considers to use the actual web content management system that exist as distinct solutions like the open source and commercial ones which offer a number of these features as core components or add-ons that require customization based on the context situation which in this case is the institutional web site. There are thus different strategies for web site management in order to offer users with information when open standards and constraints are considered and the requirements brought by working in the ubiquitous world. The center of concentration is on content that have to be processed, rendered and structured on various types of devices. Nevertheless, this has to remain the same, irrespective of the environment such that a change of the user towards mobile devices will have changed their behavior in the use of web along with its applications (Pastore, 2012).
In addition, the design strategy will be made for mobiles rather that for desktop. This is because of the extensive spread of Smartphone and tablets in some cases ( Pastore, 2012). The strategy will use technologies that are founded on hypertext markup language (HTML), JavaScript and cascading stylesheet (CSS). Other languages include hypertext pre-processor (Php) for server side scripting and MySql for servers for the design of databases HTML,CSS and JavaScript languages are some of the content management system solutions that are built on solutions of open standards. These languages adopt HTML5 version and CSS version of markup and presentation in that order (Pastore, 2012).
2.2 Interfaces applicable to the mobile devices.
The responsive touch screen interface is applicable to mobile devices as it appears to create an extra personal, even intimate clink by becoming part of user’s personal identity. The screen size and touch screen interface of Smartphone such as iPads tends to invite users to center exclusively on program that runs on the foreground. This may present a welcome opportunity, to capture, at least for a short time, the entire attention of the learner when it comes to educational uses. There will be also some similarity of carryover from the usual programming language platform to the mobile platform. For instance, the basic functionality together with the user interface design can be similar in both the environments. Nevertheless, programming will be different altogether and will be carried out with the help of various tools within the mobile platform (Godwin-Jones, 2011).
The user interface in this case will have home page with login form. The form design will contain user identification (user ID) and password which the user is expected to enter. The user then clicks the login button after entering login information the home page will in addition contain the name of the university whose mobile web system is being built. The user interface will also consist of self service web page where the student user can enroll for the courses by use of their mobile devices. The design in general is a simple graphical user interface with few icons and commands which the user interacts with by means of mobile touch screen platform (Godwin-Jones, 2011).
The mobile user interface thus offers fresh human computer interaction sequences such as multi touch interfaces, image recognition, augmented reality and others that were not previously explored in traditional software engineering approaches. The design of universal user interface for different mobile phones, however, is difficult for various reasons. First is that mobile user interface development is associated with screen size and resolution which all differs in all different mobile phones. For instance, apple devices are restricted to two sizes depending on the size of the iPhone and iPad while Windows 7, Android and Blackberry offers screen f different sizes and screen resolutions. Every mobile phone thus has a unique guide to tackle user interface requirements for the developer (Dehlinger & Dixon, 2011).
2.3 The home page for a mobile device interface
The home page above provides the user with log in details, that is, user Id and password. The LOGIN command button is clicked after entering the details in the text boxes. If the user ID or the password or both are wrongly entered, then a click event to the LOGIN button returns an error on the screen to the user. The error dialogue box is expected to have one command button labeled “Re-enter” to allow the user to enter the details afresh. If all the details are entered correctly, then a click event to the LOGIN button will allow the user to get the right of entry into the self service mobile web system where he/she will be able to access the enrollment form shown in section 2.4 bellow.
2.4 Self service enrollment page
The enrollment form has a number of text box controls where the user enters the respective details. The text boxes with arrows facing up and down gives a list of options which the user should select one of them. This ensures that data entry errors by users are reduced by the system. Therefore, the information about gender, department and course enrolled for fields are already available in the list box for selection. The arrow facing left on the top most left of the form helps the user to simply navigate backward to the home page. On the other hand, the arrow facing to the right on the top right corner f the form helps the user to navigate the system to the next web page without any complication.
The form has three command buttons. The click event to the command button after filling in all the necessary details correctly will send the details of the user to the server database. In case there is any incorrect information filled within the text box, the OK button returns an error message to the user on the screen. Any click event to the CANCEL button will cancel the details already entered within the text boxes and thus will not be sent to the database. Clicking the EXIT button will automatically close or exits the enrollment form.
3.0 Prototyping
3.1 The prototypes that could be created
The proposed mobile software application should use a prototype for wireless keyboard and a mouse consisting of touch pad through the wireless network. This kind of prototype is proven to be capable of carrying out the majority of actions that a standard computer keyboard and mouse do perform. The prototype should thus perform click operations, multi touching, multi scrolling and zooming. Moreover, the prototype should allow the student users to use keyboard function that operate precisely like the normal computer keyboard. The users should be capable of using the keyboard to type in order to search for things on the web, write emails and even chart. The client and server applications are the most crucial factors that this prototype should present. The client application is to be developed using Android SDK then installed on user devices as web applications. To be accessed using the web browser. The server application will work as a pair to the client and will be used to transmit the message to the listener. The server application is developed using Php scripting language (Chong,Chong & Ajiroba, 2013).
The prototype should therefore ensure that users can remotely use their mobile devices to access their computers easily through limited distance. The prototype application is expected to enhance to enhance the level cost savings, relaxation and convenience. The prototype functionality is also expected to contain four major functionalities namely login page, menu page, enrolment page and the controller page and touch pad layout screen all on the client side to be installed on the devices. The server side will contain two functionalities. The first functionality is that the user should be in a position to install server application in his or her computer. Second is that the server application have to be run as required after installation .The prototype is thus expected to practically change the mobile phone into a wireless keyboard and mouse by means of wireless network through portable mobile devices that runs under Android platform operating system (Chong,Chong & Ajiroba, 2013).
3.2 The type of usability test for determining the design that provides the best user experience.
The mobile application usability testing will be used to determine the design that offers the best user experience. Usability according to ISO 9241 can be defined as the scope at which the product can be used by particular users in order to obtain some particular goals with efficiency, effectiveness as well as satisfaction within specified use context. The aspects of usability that are employed in this type of usability testing are those that applies for all software types: easier to learn aspect where operations can be learned through object observation, more user satisfaction aspect which meets user expectations and extra efficient to use aspect which involves taking less time to accomplish a given task.. Usability tests for these aspects helps in reducing usability challenges in the mobile system (Nayebi, Desharnais Abran, 2012).
Usability testing, also called user testing consists of parameters that involve various kinds of users such as novice and expert users. This helps in finding various kinds of usability problems aimed at capturing performance of users via distinct types of observation and satisfaction of the user while testing the mobile web system interface (Panda, Savain & Mall, 2015).3.3 The evaluation methods for determining the design provide the best user experience.The mobile application evaluation methods will apply. In general, the evaluation methods include evaluators based evaluation method, also called heuristic testing evaluation; tool based testing evaluation and user testing evaluation method. Heuristic testing evaluation method refers to usability engineering approach used for finding and examining usability issues that exist in a given user interface design. This forms part of process for interactive design. The tool based testing evaluation involves the use of several types of software tools in order to find various kinds of usability issues. The tools in this case will automatically examine whether the commonly embraced set of principles are followed by the website. The user evaluation testing method employs a group of parameters that comprises various types of users. This is also aimed at capturing performance of different levels of users ( Panda, Savain & Mall, 2015).
The specific methods to be used in evaluating mobile usability consist of field studies, laboratory experiments and use of hands-on measurements. In field study, mobile users are offered with mobile applications and then asked concerning their experience of use. The laboratory experiments involve the use of human participants to carry out particular tasks by means of mobile applications in a laboratory environment that is controlled. The use of hands on measurements will comprise of defined features of mobile applications which are directly measured for the purpose of evaluating usability (Nayebi, Desharnais & Abran, 2012).
Implementation
Since the university already offers self service website for non-mobile students, parallel implementation approach will be applied which will ensure that both the existing and the fresh system runs concurrently for the time being. This will allow changes to take place gradually as non-mobile students will be required to acquire and learn the use of mobile phones with time. As part of implementation, various web programming languages and tools will be used. The HTML5 version mentioned earlier will be applied to avoid the much work of writing separate codes for various mobile device application platforms. The Php language and My Sql will be used will be used for implementation of sever side functionalities. On the other hand, Javascript, HTML5,CSS and Android will be used to implement client side functionalities
Maintenance and Growth
The maintenance process will be aimed at ensuring that the self service website is kept current. To achieve this, four types of maintenance practices will be necessary. They include corrective, preventative, adaptive and perfective maintenance. Corrective maintenance will simply help in the correction of errors that might still exist in the mobile web system after implementation. Preventative maintenance will be aimed at ensuring that no future errors or malfunction occurs in the system. Perfective maintenance will be carried out for the main purpose of enhancing the efficiency of the self service system. Last but not least is the adaptive maintenance which will be very instrumental in ensuring that the self service system adapts to the changing technology as newer mobile devices are being introduced at a rapid rate. As a result, the adaptive maintenance will help in ensuring future growth of the self service system.
References
Pastore, S. E. R. E. N. A. (2012). Website development and web standards in the ubiquitous world: where are we going. WSEAS Transactions on Computers, 11(9).
Godwin-Jones, R. (2011). Emerging technologies: Mobile apps for language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 15(2), 2-11.
Dehlinger, J., & Dixon, J. (2011, October). Mobile application software engineering: Challenges and research directions. In Workshop on Mobile Software Engineering.
Chong, S. C., Chong, L. Y., & Ajiroba, S. B. (2013). A Mobile-Based Computer Controller via Android Technology. International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science, 5(3).
Panda, S. K., Swain, S. K., & Mall, R. (2015). An Investigation into Usability Aspects of E-Commerce Websites Using Users’ Preferences.
Nayebi, F., Desharnais, J. M., & Abran, A. (2012, April). The state of the art of mobile application usability evaluation. In CCECE (pp. 1-4).
Khan, E. (2012). Natural language based human computer interaction: a necessity for mobile devices. International Journal of Computers and Communications, (4).
