Case Diagram

Sales user interface design project

Introduction

The user interface is a very important aspect of any software. The user needs an interface that he/she can interact with much ease. As a result of this, the designer's major role should be the creation of a most pleasurable user interface that will allow the user to interact with the software without realizing the complications therein in the invoice. This proposal details the outline of the design implementation in relation to user interface designing.

Purpose of the system

The major purpose of designing user interface is to allow easy access, understanding and use of the major purpose of creating user interface are to create elements which anticipate what the user needs and allow the user to gain access, understanding, and application of the elements within the software. The elements within the interface allow interaction both visual and audio between the user and the system software (Chikurtev, Yovchev & Chikurtev, 2016). This software design is aimed to work with the sales software. A sales system allows the interaction of the customer with the system. Through the interface, the user can analyze sales, sales trends and other functions of the system with use as the interface is designed with elements and keys which allow zooming, inversion, and transformation of the images on the system using the user interface.

History of system development

The user interface came into the picture in the year 1981. It was discovered that graphics on the digital user’s interface in conjunction with the pointing device would allow great use of the system. This led to the creation of Xerox Star an integration of desktop computer in the year 1973 (Laaksoet al. 2016). 1.0 Macintosh operating system was the second to be designed with a complete graphical user's interface. The system had only a few of the current operating system which was window-based icons. The window allowed movement through the use of the mouse (Pathak, et al. 2018). In early 2000, there was more advancement with Apple creating Optical devices which developed to magic mouse allowing the user to have more interaction using different fingers (Jones, Clothier, & Jiang, 2018).

System operation

The creation of user interfaces since their creation had not been applied until early 2000. Apple picked up the pace through the creation of an optical mouse. The development and advancement of the mouse led to application and wide application of user interfaces. In the year 2001, UI was introduced with the touch-based user interface. Later, the mouse was designed to become extra-sensitive allowing the designers to scrub buttons from the computer. The use of user interfaces evolved leading to the creation of smartphones in addition to tablets (OGGIONNI, 2018). The UI has enabled users to access and interact with any and all digital substances.

Maintenance

Maintenance is the last step in the designing system. This process entails ensuring that the system is able to function as purposefully as possible. It’s through this step that user interfaces were developed from the first design to the current design. The process entails feedback from the users is incorporated into the improvements during the last stage of software development. In addition, requests for new features as well as their implementations are analyzed and updated into the user interface. The changes should be backed up (Laudon & Laudon, 2016).

Project client

The client of the project is an online shopping firm. Through the interface, the customers of the firm should be able to view the prices, offers available, warranties of each product, a number of sales of the product and for how long the product has been on the platform. In addition, the platform through the user interface will allow the customers to order, pay and return products using the application.

Software Design Specification

An online shopping firm is a Company that markets and sell its products on an online platform. By the term online platform, it is the web application that simulates all activities parting the merchandise. The main function of the platform includes order processing, integrated payment for good and service, and communication. However, the current system of the firm has functional issues as discussed below.

Poorly Design and Implemented User Interfaces

The form of control elements of the user interface (input fields, buttons, check boxes, and radio groups) does not look appealing to the users. Form input fields don't clear the data even after the user has submitted the data. This leads to possible replication of the requested data in the event the users mistakenly click the button for the second time. Moreover, the input fields do not perform the minimum client-side validation of input data. These issues lead to erroneous transaction due to the possibility of compromised data in the system's database. Radio groups, buttons, and checkboxes are not orderly positioned.

Low performance

The current system does not execute the user's request at a desirable speed. The system hung when there are many users requesting different services at a given time-it does not scale with the number of transactions per unit time. There is no proper synchronization of executable threads due to poor programming practices.

Various Elements to be Considered When defining System's Objectives

The objectives of the desired system are to have an interactive user interface, to provide high security to business data, to offers services within minimal time, and to reduce operational costs on services. During the determination of these objectives, the following are the fundamental elements that will be addressed.

A secured Network Infrastructure

The network infrastructure in which the system is going to run should be designed and implemented in a technology that proves maximum security of business data. The network should be installed with security devices such as antivirus, firewalls, routers, and SAN fabrics. The backend subsystem (databases) should be built on a database function that checks for security. Two-factor Authentication (2FA) should be implemented to check on user logins and the validity of their credentials (Petsas, Tsirantonakis, Athanasopoulos, & Ioannidis, 2015, April). The system shall be built on leveraged cryptographic technology for encryption of information before being sent over the internet.

The Ability of the System to Scale with increased Number of Transactions

In order to achieve sustainability, reliability, and availability of the system, the system should be built to support asynchronous execution of threads. This will make the system to support multithreading of large user requests at the same time. A scalable system functions without fatigue and it is available 24 hours in seven days for continuous service to the customers.

Flexibility to Allow Room for Future Requirements

The system shall be designed in a manner that allows for future modifications that incorporate future business requirements. The online shopping activities of the Company keeps on increasing and hence new business requirements are realized (Song, 2017). These will need to be captured and the system must be ready to accommodate this. Of critical importance is to let the system have enough data storage (large capacity databases) hold data in future times.

In conclusion, the current system of the online shopping firm has many functional issues specifically low performance and poorly designed user interfaces. Therefore, the system needs to be re-engineered in order to function as expected. While anticipating for the system to achieve its objectives, elements such as secured network infrastructure, flexibility for future changes, and scalability with an increased number of transactions must be considered.

References

Chikurtev, D., Yovchev, K., & Chikurtev, E. (2016). Design and functionality of the web user interface for control of service mobile robot through the Internet. Problems of Engineering Cybernetics and Robotics, Sofia, 67, 51-60.

Jones, P. A., Clothier, J., & Jiang, X. (2018, December). DigiView: connecting digital resources to the physical sphere through embedded library interfaces. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction(pp. 506-512). ACM.

Laakso, K. P., Husu, T., Romppainen, M., Fagerlund, J., Kettunen, M., & Standell, T. (2016, May). User Interface Design In Agile Projects. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1007-1010). ACM.

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education India.

OGGIONNI, M. (2018). Be pleasurable, be innovative. The emotional side of design thinking.

Pathak, K., Sharma, D. K., Bhalla, V., Jain, A., & Lad, M. (2018). Design and development of a graphical user interface for remote monitoring and control of the RF system. In Proceedings of the eighth DAE-BRNS Indian particle accelerator conference.

Petsas, T., Tsirantonakis, G., Athanasopoulos, E., & Ioannidis, S. (2015, April). Two-factor authentication: is the world ready?: quantifying 2FA adoption. In Proceedings of the eighth european workshop on system security (p. 4). ACM.

Song, W. (2017). Requirement management for product-service systems: Status review and future trends. Computers in Industry, 85, 11-22.