Car Booking and Maintenance System
Front End Analysis
Car Booking and Maintenance System is a website designed to help system users to hire cars as well as help car owners to have appointments with mechanics. The system presents users with a homepage where more information about the company and the services offered can be obtained. While at the homepage, users are required to login into the website in order to access services offered. The system has been created to offer easy navigation from one webpage to the other (Benveniste et al., 2018). This has been made possible through menu bar which has all available links to move over the website. To offer standard interface, the system has been created in conformity with user interface design principles such as clarity and simplicity. At the homepage, the name of the system is clearly stated to explain functionality of the system. The system offers capability to register new customers in business, register new employees who are available for booking, available cars for hire as well as hiring of the cars. On the user interface design preferences, the black menu bar was chosen to make it possible to change the back color of link once visited. The green “Home” link button was used to make it different from other links. Finally, the white color of the link names seems more appealing than any other color.
System users
There are three main system users in this system; car owners, car hires and garage owners. Car owners would use the system to make booking of available mechanics when they need their cars serviced. Booking of mechanics makes it possible for garage owners to schedule customers as well as make sure there is no congestion during service delivery (Teevan, Dumais & Horvitz, 2018). Mechanics would be able to register their qualifications so that garage owner is able to plan and schedule each of the employee in relation to number of clients available. The garage owner would use the website plan for all business operations so that they are run without conflict. Through use of this system, customers would be getting efficient services on timely manner. All people can use the system as it is not limited to specific group of people. All system users are required to be legally mature in order to get services from the website. For a customer to book a vehicle, it is a requirement to present an identification document as well as driving license. In case of employees, they are required to present their identification document as well as driving license. This clearly makes it mandatory for any system user to be of 16 year old. Generally, there is no limitation on the use of the system as far as expertise is concerned. It can be used by experts and non-expertise.
System environment
According to Scerbo (2018), the website should be designed with all capabilities to run on both computers and phones of all Operating system versions. The system setting would be designed to make sure all screen resolutions have been catered for. This makes sure all users would be able to use the system without limiting some customers. The system would be hosted from the external severs to make it available to all users (Riley, 2018). Business owners would be required to request for service availability by registering with the system and making required payments for users’ names and passwords. Customers would register with the system for free in order to choose available registered car renters as well as mechanic centers. Outdoor hosting would make it possible to capture more customers from across the globe.
User preferences and requirements
Usually, any system design is guided by user preferences and requirements that are collected to guide in the design of the system. Garage owners were part of the group of users who gave out specifications of hosting the outdoors for ease of accessibility from all part of the globe. Most of the system users argued it would be useful because they will be able to check service delivery even when they are away from business. Similarly, mechanics approved the system by considering they would be able to determine their work load as well as evaluate the level of technicality and expertise required to solve specific problems. Finally, car owners were quite happy because they would be able to reduce waste of time they spend at garages.
Functions and Tasks
System users would be able to register for services by submitting all required information. In this regard, car hires would be able to book cars in advance to avoid last minute rush during events. Car owners who need car maintenance services would be able to book available mechanical experts in advance. Similarly, business owners would be able to schedule on business operations of the day depending on the availability of mechanics available.
Interactive design and testing
The system user interface has been designed in such a way that users are able to navigate from webpage to the other through menu bar. To make sure users are free to navigate from webpage and back, links were created to cater for such functionality (Yang et al., 2018). Additionally, it is also possible to search for customers when filling out some data instead of entering data in all fields. Testing has to be done by checking if data values entered into the fields are valid in order to enforce data integrity (Wellman et al., 2018). A good example is where phone numbers are required, check if system can accept other values other than numerical.
Design principles
According to Dewdney et al., (2013), all system designs are governed by design principles such as clarity of the system. It is very clear and simple to use as there is no confusion on the use of the system (Treder & Blankertz, 2010). Fields and buttons are placed at the center of the page and close to each other to make sure user do not scroll across the webpage to access controls. The simplicity of the website was achieved through use of common words in labelling as well having placeholders.
Mock-ups and prototypes
Sample of webpages from the website are shown here.
Heuristic Evaluation
By considering the prototype design, some of the design characteristics such as font color, menu bar, menu color and background color of the system was achieved through use of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). Generally, color selection and font choice was specifically done to increase system visibility. Menu bar navigation was achieved through grouping of links and formatting them through CSS. Some of the aspects such as database communication with the interface was quite challenging due to limitation of skills and knowledge. Consequently, drop down menu option on mouse over was not done due to its technicality. Finally, resolution of design was made by creating settings that allow websites to be viewable in all devices in the market.
Usability testing
System usability testing was done to make sure system conforms to requirements of the system. It has to work according to user specifications or customer requirements (Proctor & Zandt, 2018). System is quite efficient to use considering ability to navigate, visibility of the system, clarity and menu bar availability. Similarly, system validation has been done to make sure data entered into the system meets business functional requirements and integrity (Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012). Validation has been done in such a way that, as users enters or leaves any field without data, system gives an error message to the user. User satisfaction has been catered by implementing all feedbacks collected from customers in order to capture all their needs.
References
Benveniste, A., Caillaud, B., Nickovic, D., Passerone, R., Raclet, J. B., Reinkemeier, P., & Larsen, K. G. (2018). Contracts for system design. Foundations and Trends in Electronic Design Automation, 12(2-3), 124-400.
Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business intelligence and analytics: from big data to big impact. MIS quarterly, 1165-1188.
Dewdney, P., Turner, W., Millenaar, R., McCool, R., Lazio, J., & Cornwell, T. (2013). SKA1 system baseline design. Document number SKA-TEL-SKO-DD-001 Revision, 1(1).
Proctor, R. W., & Van Zandt, T. (2018). Human factors in simple and complex systems. CRC press.
Riley, V. (2018). Operator reliance on automation: Theory and data. In Automation and human performance (pp. 39-56). Routledge.
Scerbo, M. W. (2018). Theoretical perspectives on adaptive automation. In Automation and human performance (pp. 57-84). Routledge.
Teevan, J., Dumais, S. T., & Horvitz, E. (2018). Personalizing search via automated analysis of interests and activities. In ACM SIGIR Forum (Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 10-17). ACM.
Treder, M. S., & Blankertz, B. (2010). (C) Overt attention and visual speller design in an ERP- based brain-computer interface. Behavioral and brain functions, 6(1), 28.
Wellman, S. M., Eles, J. R., Ludwig, K. A., Seymour, J. P., Michelson, N. J., McFadden, W. E., & Kozai, T. D. (2018). A materials roadmap to functional neural interface design. Advanced functional materials, 28(12), 1701269.
Yang, C., Zeng, C., Liang, P., Li, Z., Li, R., & Su, C. Y. (2018). Interface design of a physical human–robot interaction system for human impedance adaptive skill transfer. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 15(1), 329-340.
