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Course Name
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Internet Technology (M)
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Coursework Number
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1 (of 3) – Design Specification
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Design Specification (10%)
Introduction
Your group should come up with a web application to develop. Let your imagination fly but be practical! We will mainly mark the quality of the design and implementation and only reserve very few marks for the novelty of the idea.
The application you design needs to:
· involve user authentication;
· interact with some kind of model stored in a database;
· be visually appealing and have an intuitive user interface;
· allow the user to input something which is then used in some way by the application.
· overall, the functionality supported should be rich enough in order to allow you to demonstrate an understanding of the technologies covered in this course.
Having discussed your ideas within your team, you are required to come up with a Design Specification, which will provide a whole range of details regarding the design of the web application that you intend to implement. This will include an overview, a specification, system architecture diagram, ER diagram, site map, and wireframes.
The Design Specification is worth 10% of the overall assessment of the course and is due in by 13 February at 4.30pm. One submission per team is required.
What should be included in the submission
Imagine that you are submitting your idea to get funding – so you have to prepare a power point presentation to describe:
1. an overview of the application (i.e., what it does and why it is useful) – 1 slide;
2. the specification i.e. a list of key requirements – 1 slide;
3. a high-level system architecture diagram – 1 slide;
4. an ER Diagram (in compressed Chen notation), along with a description of the attributes in each entity – 2 slides max;
5. a site map showing the site organisation – 1 slide;
6. a number of wireframes to show the main functionality of the system – at least 2 and at most 5 slides
In an appendix to this (1 page), you also must specify each team member’s contribution to this part of the coursework (in %) and what they contributed to it.
Working in a team
You should think about how the tasks associated with the design of your team’s web app should be divided. Try to ensure that activities are assigned so that every member of the team can be involved at all times.
Please note that under normal circumstances all members in a team will be assigned the same mark.
Teamwork is an important part of software development: in industry, large software development tasks are constantly being undertaken in teams that can vary in size from two to several hundred. In any team it is recognised that people will contribute in different ways. It is important to ensure that you are always aware of your role and that you have an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the project at all times.
All members of a team will usually receive the same mark. Where members of a team find the contribution of other members to be unsatisfactory, you are encouraged to resolve the issue internally by negotiation first. However, if this is not possible, the course coordinator should be asked to intervene as soon as possible.
The mark awarded to individual members of the team may be adjusted to reflect the individual’s contribution (i.e. if you do not contribute at all, your group coursework mark will be set to 0). We will be using Deltas as a way of adjusting the team mark in order to arrive at an individual’s mark for the team-based components of the course (Design Specification, Presentation and Project).
Each member of a team will be required to submit a form, giving their own as well as their team members’ contributions. A Delta typically adjusts the team mark up or down by 0 or more bands for a given individual according to the contribution. The computation of these Deltas will be informed by the percentage scores that each member of the team will provide, which gives a numerical estimate of the proportion of the overall effort undertaken by each person (including themselves). We will also look at the contributions listed in the appendix to validate any adjustments.
How to submit
Your Design Specification must be saved as a PDF document. One member of the team should submit the pdf document via the “Design Specification” submission icon on the Moodle page of the course. The person making the submission will be required to complete a Declaration of Originality on behalf of all team members when submitting via Moodle. If you have used any external sources, be sure to acknowledge them in your submission.
Useful resources
See this guide for developing wireframes:
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/a-beginners-guide-to-wireframing--webdesign-7399
There are a number of applications that might be helpful when it comes to creating your system architecture diagram, ER diagram and wireframes, including http://www.draw.io.
Although you are not asked to include this explicitly in your presentation, you may find it useful to think around user personas and user scenarios, to lay out the requirements of your web application. Here are some resources, with examples of user scenarios, which you can consult:
https://www.justinmind.com/blog/how-to-design-user-scenarios/
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1290485
Finally, accessibility is an important aspect in the design of the information architecture. You may find these web user stories from W3C useful in understanding web application accessibility:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/user-stories/
Marking scheme
Your design specification will be assessed using the following mark breakdown:
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Component and description of what is sought
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Marks
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Overview
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Contains sufficient detail so that the reader can understand what web app is supposed to do for the user.
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5
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Specification
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The list of requirements should be sufficiently detailed for it to be clear how the web app will fulfil the needs of the intended users.
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3
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System architecture diagram
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This high-level diagram should include the different components of the system and in particular any additional APIs that might be used.
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3
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ER Diagram
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The model should be relevant and appropriate in the context of the specification. The diagram should adhere to compressed Chen notation
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4
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Site Map
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This should make it clear how the different templates that make up the app are linked together
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3
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Wireframes
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The wireframes should include the main functionality of the web app. There should be a sufficient number to illustrate the functionality provided by the app as indicated by the specification.
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5
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Presentation
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The design specification should be well-structured, clearly written and aesthetically pleasing.
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2
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Total
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25
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The total mark will be converted to a band which will be the team’s mark for this component of the assessment.