Dissertation - initial ideas

[Pav89]

Hi guys! I'm going to be entering into my final year of study. I am carrying out my degree in Information Systems and have limited knowledge of programming; I've done a little, but not too much.

I am determined to carry out my dissertation for a real world company who requires a solution which could possibly be integrated into production. I would appreciate some help/encouragement in the following proposal and whether or not you approve . I haven't been able to receive all the details of the proposal so far, but here is what I've gathered so far from the company:


Basically the company sells a product. They want a solution whereby all the components to create the product can be added together to create the finished product then multiplied by the number of orders...say 100,000 orders, as they need a quick and easy system to view the pricing. It must be very easy to use and intuitive. I also need to integrate a way to calculate cost efficiency from buying the components from suppliers. It's also got to be fairly easy for the end user to be able to add more components.

Now the dissertation can focus on the UI aspect, on designing different types of UI's etc. My first thought is to have a web based system whereby the centre of the page has an outline of the product, the components are on the left hand side. The user drags the components onto the product and they gradually build up the product. Quantity etc can be entered on the right hand side, and pricing shows up there. So, thinking about it, PHP + SQL for this solution sounds right? They also said using devices such as ipod touches could also be a possibility, so building an iphone app could also be another way of doing things...

There are other solutions which I've also thought about. I just want to get a gut feeling on whether the friendly folk here believe that it's too hard of a project for a programming noob...or maybe a simpler UI will do the trick. Also I'm interested in what it should be built in - PHP...Java...? What's the best bet for something like this? As I said, I am really determined to do this. It's too good of an opportunity to pass up

Please post your thoughts

Cheers

 

[Edward01]

Yeh, web based system would be easy enough to do.

I'm assuming the components to create said product differ or their building products to spec or something otherwise you'd be using the same components all the time!!

Basically you'd want a MySql DB with all the components in with their associated prices, a PHP backend whereby the company can log in, view all the components by category, select the components they wish, enter the amount they'll need a calculate a total, and some simple HTML / CSS for styling.

All in all, not to difficult if you know PHP. The drag and drop will be done in Java Script, something like JQuery has drag and drop built in natively and shouldn't be too hard to integrate.

I suppose it depends how quickly you pick up codeing if you've never done it before. W3schools is a great resource, as is tizag and php.net.

Start off following a tutorial on how to build a simple contact form in PHP and see how you get on.


Edit // Thinking about it, probably not much use for your dissertation, but you could probably hack a shopping cart CMS easily enough to this...

 

[sparkey196]

You could technically implement this very easily with jquery sortable and some simple crud patterns in codeigniter. My main concerns are two fold.

1) it might not be complex enough a challenge to demonstrate your best abilities.
2) it would be a massive liability to use software in production created by someone who, by their own admission doesn't know how to program.

Definitely talk it over with your supervisor and find out if this project has sufficient scope for a top mark.

 

[!bluetonic!]

I did something similar for my dissertation. To produce a low cost way of selling products online. This was back in 2003 when the internet was brand new.

In your written text, try to cover all areas in-depth. Updating products, customer payments, on-site, off-site hosting, e-mail support, back end system i.e. XML vs flat file vs SQLite, routine backups, VAT changes, currency changes, plus anything else you can think of.

For your UI example, make sure it conforms to web standards. Will work on the target browser of the customer base (i.e. javascript enabled, flash installed if needed etc)

For the Iphone idea, you can show mock screen shots and the cost of coding, but not necessarily need to learn objective C.

jQuery is your friend for quick design show-off screens.

A well thought out, constructive back end would also be advised.

 

[_TubbZ_]

I did something similar for my dissertation. To produce a low cost way of selling products online. This was back in 2003 when the internet was brand new.

I don't think it was brand new then!

I too am going back to uni soon and need to decide on what i would like to do for the proj/dis but i don't think it matters as much what you but more how you do it and all that documenting

 

[Nucleo]

Hey buddy,
I did the exact same degree and graduated last year, now a product manager for a software development company.

Simple 'websites with php & mysql' are nothing new and your supervisor will try to move you away from doing it. focus on the algorithm of working out costs and finding the cheapest supplier. Add in some mashups with google maps for distance/shipping, and froogle/amazon for getting price lists.

going mobile, dont bother with a mobile application. Just make the website mobile accessible, simple clean html, minimal images and efficient code. Take aspects of the main site and use them where they can be used. That way you hit 90% of smartphones without developing the application platform dependant.

My uni disso was a CRM application built using adobe flex. The whole interface was customisable and could be altered per user, font sizes, text sizes, layout of all form elements. the user could remove massive aspects of the screen for their own personal use.

My writeup included potential performance issues, how and if It could go mobile, potential future expansion etc.