Laws Computers
Summary: A Level project whereby a customer can customise and order a computer and staff can manage completed orders.
My final project for A Level at college was an assignment to develop an application, backed by a database, for a self-created small business, in any programming language and database product. I chose PHP and MySQL and having been impressed with the DELL Computers website, chose to design a similar system of my own. This project involved following through the entire systems lifecycle from requirements to evaluation and was completed over three months.
The overall objective was to implement a system where the customer could completely customise a computer to their specifications and the staff managing the system could view orders, fulfill them and bill the customer quickly and efficiently. The system managers are also able to add, remove and modify base computer packages as well as the options that can be ordered with them. The design was kept simple, with a minimal colour scheme and layout, as in this case the overall functioning of the system was what was being assessed.
The system is fully-functioning and after some modifications to bring it up to date could be easily used by a PC vendor as their e-commerce solution.
Rescue the Whales
Summary: University project to derive requirements and develop a website for a made-up charity.
This was the first project I had to undertake at University. The assignment was to derive requirements and develop a basic website for a made-up charity with the aim of persuading people to support and volunteer for that particular charity. I chose to design a website for a charity which aimed to stop the suffering of the oceans whale population. This was for the reason that I knew there were a lot of good facts and figures relating to whales, there are a number of charities already setup to support this cause and I would be able to successfully create a well-styled website design to support my charity.
The result of my project was a fairly simple but clean layout with a colour scheme that fit with the whale images being used throughout the website. The whole website was produced over a weekend, with the aim being to keep it simple throughout. I didn't want to use a huge amount of effects and java scripts which often cause usability issues and slow down page loading, instead preferring a completely clean layout to get the main points across. This was my reasoning for keeping the main page very simple, focusing on images of whales as well as some statistics designed to persuade people that the cause was worth at least being aware of.
Garden Centre Shopping Cart
Summary: Final year university project to design and build a shopping cart system for a garden centre business.
As part of my final year dissertation project at university I chose to determine the requirements, design and build a shopping cart system for a garden centre business. The aim here was to make a generic system that could easily be installed by any garden centre business (of which there are many) to sell their products online. There were two key aspects to this piece of work, the first being the requirements specification process and the second was to use the latest internet technologies to fulfill the requirements.
The requirements specification process involved conducting a full analysis of a garden centre organisation and its processes (with validation), using this to then derive system requirements and also making comparisons with existing websites as well to create a system that would be better than those already in the marketplace. After analysis I determined that two key functions of the system would be necessary, a backend management system for the garden centre and a front-end shopping cart system for the customer to use. Both of which would need to be completely customizable in terms of content and design theme.
 The implementation was a relatively quick process (approx. 3 weeks) although not everything was fully completed. The system uses PHP and MySQL throughout with various Web 2.0 technologies being introduced as well, for example AJAX for the shopping cart in order to cut down loading times and improve system usability over that of many other shopping carts already on the market. Any product category, product, information page, headings and colours are able to be easily changed from within the back-end system. This means that with a few modifications to adjust payment processing routines it could be dropped into any new or existing e-commerce business and the data populated extremely quickly. In order to ensure complete customization, the system uses a minimal amount of images and keeps a fairly standard website layout throughout.
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