Creating a travel planning ICT system

Analysis

Year 11 project

Background knowledge

In this project I will be creating a system to help plan the costs, amount of people and which people are going on the overnight trip.

Here you will be taking the role of Sana, who is helping her French teacher (Mr Campbell) work out the costs of the week long French trip as he was experiencing some difficulty.

On a day to day basis Mr Campbell has to create a letter about parent evenings for the trip, permission slips, dietary and medical requirements and remaining money. He also needs to work out the total in goings and total outgoings and make sure that the school doesn’t make a loss but doesn’t need to make a profit. He will also need to create a record of data about which pupils are going and aren’t going and how we will put this in and use this to help create letters

As Mr Campbell was experiencing some difficulty working out the costs using a calculator and paper and you had suggested that you would create a system that helps him work out the cost very easily and is a very user friendly design (maybe a user guide to help those who find this system hard and need some help) and you should ensure that anybody with little knowledge of computers is able to change certain amounts e.g. amount of people to see how this affects the overall costs. Sana has also offered to create a system in which Mr Campbell can enter a pupil’s data, how much they have paid (deposit and other monies) and if he/her has brought in the reply slip, this system must also be able search within this data and pick out what you are asking to see. As well as creating a system that does this you must create a system that links to the list of names and using the information that you have searched for I should be able to create a letter to be sent to parents about reply slips, remaining money etc.

My user for this system is Mr Campbell and Mrs Mccloud and could be the deputy head, head teacher etc. As anyone who needs to know how many people will be missing school and how long for, other teachers will need this information to ensure that all important work is given before and after (this information could be presented in queries or reports). Many people will need to access this record or receive information about the trip so I should be able to send out pieces to teachers e.g. form, lesson etc about which dates will be missed.

At the moment the business is run by Mr Campbell and he runs it by collecting information from letters and from pupils then writing it down into a log book but this way is too long and too hard so I will be creating a system which will significantly decrease the amount of time wasted by sifting through handwritten data.

Sub problems involved

In this task there are 4 different sub-problems within the system they are shown on the next page in the diagram with the problem being at the top and the sub problems being shown below and also how these sub problems are linked shown on the diagram.

My first sub problem is my costing sheet which will work out all the separate and total costs of the trip. For this sub problem I could use Microsoft word and Microsoft excel. There are advantages and disadvantages of all of these problems and there are all listed below these will all help me to decide which would be the best method of working out these costs. I have chosen these two programs because in each one I can create tables.

Different methods of tackling the problem

In Microsoft word I can

Create a table
Merge cells
Change the page layout (portrait and landscape)
Change the background colour of the cells
Change the text colour of the cells
Change the justification of the cells
Make cells bold, italic or underlined
Auto fit the cells
I can sort the data
I can add formulas
Use a table auto format

But using Microsoft word also has its disadvantages

Harder to change formulas
Harder to use
If something needed to be changed if would be harder for ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Different methods of tackling the problem

In Microsoft word I can

Create a table
Merge cells
Change the page layout (portrait and landscape)
Change the background colour of the cells
Change the text colour of the cells
Change the justification of the cells
Make cells bold, italic or underlined
Auto fit the cells
I can sort the data
I can add formulas
Use a table auto format

But using Microsoft word also has its disadvantages

Harder to change formulas
Harder to use
If something needed to be changed if would be harder for the user

I think that Microsoft word isn’t a very good program to use because even though you can do a lot of things with making the table and changing things within the table I don’t feel that this is the right program to use as I would like a program specifically designed to do things like costing sheets as I have more experience with those so I am able to make them more user friendly and use more features on it.

In Microsoft excel I can

Create a table
Merge cells
Change the page layout (portrait and landscape)
Change the background colour of the cells
Change the text colour of the cells
Change the justification of the cells
Make cells bold, italic or underlined
Auto fit the cells
I can sort the data
I can add formulas
Use a table auto format
Create graphs with data
Do auto sum
Use conditional formatting

I can also do many other things that would be useful to the sub problem. The disadvantages of this is

it might seem hard to use

the only problem I have with this program is that it could look hard top use but with a user guide and a colour coded system I think that that is over come easily and because I am able to do many different things with this package as I am more familiar to it and I think that that would benefit the user.

Any methods of doing this would be better than handwriting it because then I would have to work everything out for each little change and keep writing out the results and this can be very time consuming so the best option is to use a computer with maybe a program that is able to create costing sheets

For my second sub problem I am creating a poster to advertise this trip to France I am going to use Microsoft word, publisher or paint. I will be listing there advantages and disadvantages to help me to decide which one is more appropriate and suited to this task.

Microsoft word is good because

can insert picture
can insert text
can make text boxes
can change colour, background and type and size and justification of text
can change colours etc of background
can insert tables to display data
can insert diagrams

You can also do many other things with Microsoft word sop it would be a good program to use but I don’t have as much freedom with the text etc then what I would have with another program in which I am able to do many more things.

Paint is a good program to use because

I have a lot of freedom within this program
Can create my own lines and shapes and copy and paste parts easily
Can insert text boxes

Microsoft paint also has many other good points but I still think I that this program isn’t the most ideal because:

I don’t now how to make it fit the whole page
Cant use word art, would have to copy and paste it

There are also more problems with it and they wouldn’t really influence my decision as I think that using paint is already to tedious from the above two problems so it isn’t the most desirable solution.

Microsoft publisher is good because

I have freedom
can insert picture
can insert text
can make text boxes
can change colour, background and type and size and justification of text
can change colours etc of background
can insert tables to display data
can insert diagrams

I can also do other things with Microsoft publisher but they do not need to be stated as I don’t feel that that has any tedious or major problems with it so feel that for this task it is the best piece of software to use.

Using a computer and its software to tackle this sub problem rather than using a computer because it would take me a long time as well as designing it I would them need to draw and stick anything on then I would need to colour each drawing in staying within the lines and making sure the colour is even this isn’t a very good thing because it would take vary long time and wouldn’t look professional so for this task it is better to use a computer.

For my third sub problem I am creating a record to store all the details about pupils and teachers going on this trip I will be using either of these two programs as I can use tables in both Mycroft access and Microsoft word.

Microsoft word would be good to use because

I can make a table
I can sort the data
I can give the data titles

The rest of what I can do with Microsoft word is irrelevant and there are too many problems to list with it because I count do much with this program and there is no use in listing it but I know for definable that I will not need to used this program as I cant even make forms or use queries.

Microsoft access would be good to use because

I can create queries
Create forms
Search for and sort data
Create definite field headings for the record
Be able to mail merge this data

There are also many other good points but I do not need to state them because of what is above and concerning this sub problem there aren’t any bad points of using this piece of software for this sub problem.

Using a computer is much better than using a hand made system because in a hand made system you would have to write each one out and if any changes needed to be made I would have to re-write the whole sheet and finding data and taking parts of that data would also be very hard as I wouldn’t be able to do it in a short period of time so using a computer would save time and frustration.

For my fourth sub problem I am creating a letter which will need to be mail merged so I can do this quickly and efficiently. I can use two programs for this task Microsoft word pad and Microsoft word. They bother have there advantages and disadvantages and stating them will help me to decide which program is better. But I already know as I cannot mail merge in word pad and retyping this letter would take too long so I already know that Microsoft word is the best option as I can mail merge here.

Using computer I much better than writing this letter out again and again or writing it out and leaving gaps for details because it is less time consuming if I do it this way sop using a computer is the much better option.

Reusability

Each of my sub problems can be used again. The first sub problem (costing sheet) is reusable because it is not just for one year because it can be used for later French trips or even other overnight trips because if anything needs to be changed like a cost for any one thing you can without changing any of the formulas as this costing sheet will be totally user friendly. The second sub problem (poster) will also be reusable because if you just change maybe the title and dates you will have a poster for another overnight trip or a poster for the same trip for a different year. The third sub problem (record) will also be reusable because if you were to delete the fields you would be able to reuse the system for a new year. The last sub problem (letter) will be reusable because if you were to use the record system to do this you would just need to delete previous records and put the new ones in and use it for next years and the years after trip.

Testing

For sub problem 1 (costing sheet) testing is needed. For sub problem 3 (record) testing is needed. For sub problem 4 (letter) testing is needed.

Performance criteria’s