Monday, March 12, 2007

Session 8 Review

This week involved the proof of concept presentations by different groups. It was a shorter class but none the less involved a great number of ideas and interesting discussions! My team put up a short introduction our project Integrated Information Distribution System for Jurong Bird Park in powerpoint slides.I've decided to use the SlideShare site we had discussed about in one of our earlier seminars to try and share my group's presentation. I do hope it shows fine!



I was really impressed with some of the groups ideas and presentations. Infact one groups (team visionaries) managed to come up with a flash presentation of the interface which was really impressive!

The rest of the seminar was used to discuss about 'Interactive Designs'. Critical Design Trends that should be implemented into applicationwere discussed about. Prof Gilbert showed a very simple game with us to illustrate the importance and power of design. The game requires two players to each take turn to choose a number from a set of numbers between 1 to 9 till either sidehas a summation of 15 from the selected numbers. He then went on to explain to us the concept of the same game could be made easier to understand by using symbols like X and O; and making it Tic-Tac-Toe. This illustration of effective design concept show us how interaction, ease of use and 'visual'-ness aids in a customers experience. It can be applied to almost any design and can help a customer have a better and more enjoyable experience.

This led up to the discussion on Used Case designing concept that helps in the process of system designs. Used cases are used in the analysis stage of a project. They help identify different functions and use what is called a used case diagram. The diagram doesn't actually tell you a whole lot but conveys the idea of the structure of the case. These diagrams are not that interesting and useful when views without the accompanied text, but along with the text form a very organised and structured analytical view of the topic. A Use Case Diagramc contains the following:
  1. Actors: An actor represents any entity that performs certain roles in the given system. These different roles are actually the business roles in reality of that system. An actor in a use case diagram interacts with a use case.
  2. Use case: A use case is a visual representation of a distinct business functionality in a system. To identify a business process as a use case, it is important to make sure the business process is discrete . Each business function can be thought of as a potential use case.
  3. System boundary: A system boundary defines the scope of what a system will be. Every system reach a limit as far as its functionality is concernced. Similarly, use cases must have a limit. A system boundary of a use case diagram basically defines the limits of the system.
I hope after learning about used case concept I am able to use them in my project and go on to improve it. I enjoyed this seminar, thought there was not much discussion, because of the new ideas that surfaced in presentations as well as learning new concepts. Looking forward to next week by which time my group has to submit our technology plan.

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