Case study: appliance warehouse – application design

continue your work to support the development and implementation of the new Service Department for Appliance Warehouse.

For this week’s assignment, be sure to refer to Appliance Warehouse Resources: Survey results, Pre-packaged software features, as well as, chapter 7 Development Strategies, and chapter 8 User Interface Design.

Directions

In MindTap, review the Appliance Warehouse Case, and do the following:

· Read the Before You Begin Message and the Module 8-10 Appliance Warehouse Webmail Client Emails. Read the messages to help determine the tasks you must complete.

· Review and analyze the weekly Appliance Warehouse case study content and resources.

Create an 8- to 10-slide presentation with speaker notes (to submit in Blackboard) for senior management with the following:

· Service Department Software Design: To build a logical model for the new information system, a system analyst must decide on whether to use a SaaS or use an in-house customized software. For this section, ensure you:

· Research service-based business applications that allow for appointment setting and service provider scheduling.

· Prepare a list of 4 pros and 4 cons for each of the following:

· SaaS

· An in-house customized software

· Recommend SaaS or in-house software and state your reasoning.

· Software Requirements: Identify 7-10 requirements the software must do to support the Services Department.

· Develop a Communication Plan: Explain how stakeholders and managers will be kept informed regarding project process. Your plan should include the form of communication (status reports,meetings, etc.), frequency, and specific project milestones that will aid in determining where the implementation stands.

Before You Begin – Assignment Specific

Going forward with in-house development, Carlie Davis is now requesting that you design SIM’s User-Interface (UI). The way an application looks and its ease of use is critical to its acceptance and success. Consider how to get these items approved by the users. During this stage, you will be designing system pages and reports. It is important to determine which hardware SAM will run on. If the software is going to run on mobile devices, the programmers need to plan the user interface accordingly.

Hi Kevin,

After your presentation last week, the manager thinks an in-house solution is the way to go. Although our programmers have much experience with system integration and development, they have little experience with user design. You’ll have to lay out all the pages of the system. For now, just create a hierarchical drawing of all the pages needed for this system. Think of the menu on the top of the screen and what you’d click on to move to the next screen.

Once you finish the hierarchy, I’ll need you to draw out examples of a few of the screens. For example, show a screen with a menu, another which requests user input, one that has methods to contact us, and the last one as an informational page. The menu screen can be an opening page or even a page to decide on types of reports to run. The user input page can be one for any of the users, such as the appointment setters or technicians. Make sure that you outline all of the required validation rules for this input page. The informational page can either be a static page or results from a search. Make sure that you include navigation buttons on each of these example pages.

I think it would be a nice touch to include our logo on all of these screens.

Carlie

Hi Kevin,

The developers want to know if this new application should run on a mobile platform. If so, they want to know if it should be created with responsive web design? What do you think would be the best and why?

I was wondering if prototyping this system might be more effective. What are the advantages and disadvantages to this approach?

Please give me your thoughts on these items by the end of the day today.

Thanks.

Carlie

Hi Kevin,

Don’t forget that we have a lunch scheduled on Friday at the corner deli. It should be fun!

I know I’ve asked for some other mockups this week but could you also mockup samples of three different report types (detail, exception, and summary)? Mae is having a difficult time visualizing how one of her summary reports would look like. Also, Maddox Farley wants to know what the parts report will look like that he will be using several times a day.

How do you plan on distributing each of these reports when SIM is up and running?

If you could get me these samples soon, I’d appreciate it. I’m meeting with Mae and Maddox first thing on Thursday.

Thanks.

Carlie