Group Design Project – B202
Product Feasibility Report - Portsmouth Electronic Student Housing List
1.0
Design Requirement
2.0
Use Case Scenarios
3.0
Design Analysis
3.1 Comparison to existing products
3.2 Concept Diagrams & Key Interfaces
4.0
Key Cost Drivers (Changes make according to what Chi said, Dan)
1.0 Design Requirement - Sean (396823) & Luke (322532)
Introduction
Student Housing is a new service that provides direct access to an electronic database of student accommodation. The idea behind Student Housing is that it provides a series of interfaces that make the software totally self sufficient requiring nearly no input from an administrator after the site has been implemented. This idea is explained thoroughly throughout this document.
Design requirement
In order to understand fully what Student Housing provides in terms of service it is essential to break it down to its simplest form and think about what makes it different to other products or potential competing brands.
So what is Student housing in its simplest form?
Student housing in its simplest form is an electronic version of a paper based housing list. It is software that provides a service to a series of users that will use the software very differently. This then leads to the questions who are the potential and essential users? And, what interfaces will the software require?
User groups
To ensure that our Student Housing design analysis captures all requirements from potential users, we identified three key user types,
• Students
• Landlords
• Site Administrators
Each user’s requirements vary greatly, therefore requirements will be categorised in to the three defined user groups.
Students
Our key user group will be students looking for available student properties; this group constitutes the majority of our end users. Student users will be visiting the site expecting a method of searching and filtering the contents of the property database in order to find a property that meets their requirements. Once the student(s) identify a property from the provided search results, it is likely they will want to view additional details of the property and/or landlord. Additional functionality will be provided to allow student users to communicate with a potential landlord regarding an advertised property.
To facilitate the specified functionality, our interface must be able to provide large quantities of properties while being easy to read.
Landlords
Secondly, members of the landlords group will be users advertising their student properties that are available to be rented. These users will be expecting functionality to register and maintain their property listing(s), also to upload images of the property. As previously mentioned, students and landlords have the ability to communicate via the website – therefore landlords will want to respond to queries from potential tenants.
Although the landlords ‘view’ of the site will require more input than the student view, it is vital that the interface is simple, fast and efficient to use. It is extremely unlikely that landlords will want to spend a lot of time maintaining their listings, or checking to see if they have new messages. Therefore it would be useful to send email notifications to the landlords to notify them of a new message.
Site Administrators
Administrators are users who will be maintaining and moderating the contents of the site. As their involvement with the system is of an administrative nature, functionality to update and remove listing or users is important. The administrators ‘view’ of the site need’s to provide as much relevant detail outlining the status of the site as possible.
So how is this idea valuable to the user?
If we look at student Housing in its most simple form, it doesn’t really offer anything different than any other housing list. This means that in order to gain any form of profit from this software, there needs to be something different that puts Student Housing a cut above the rest.
2.0 Use Case Scenarios - Ross (394251) & Aaron (394232)
Admin
Moderating Forum Posts:
Access Forum > Access Thread > View Post > Edit/Delete If Required
Administrator's can moderate the forum posts so that they can make sure that the users stay within the terms of service to avoid profanity and/or abuse towards any other members.
Add landlord:
Access Admin Console > Review Landlord Application > Confirm Application
An Admin can add a landlord via the admin console. This is done by logging in to their admin account, accessing the latest landlord applications, reviewing these and then confirming or denying their membership.
Remove Landlord:
Access Admin Console > Access Landlord Database > Remove Landlord
Should a landlord need removing, an admin can complete this task by logging into their admin section of the website, finding the landlord database, locating the user they wish to ban and selecting the delete/ban option.
Landlord
Apply to be a Landlord:
access site > access registration form > fill out landlord details > submit application
Each landlord who wants to list their houses/flats will have to apply for a landlord account, this can then be checked out to see if the Landlord is legitimate. The landlord will access the site and will fill out an application form with their details to be confirmed by an admin at a later date.
Adding a House:
log in > access house area > add new house details > submit new house
Once a landlord has an account they will be able to add their houses to the site. They will do this by accessing the site going to the housing area and adding a house/flat to their list of properties giving.
Adding Pictures/Description:
log in > Access House area > access house > add new picture/details
After a landlord has created a house they can add details at a minimum and can follow this up by adding photos, this information can be viewed by them and the students that might be interested in that particular property. This would be done in the house area and by editing the house.
Removing a House:
log in > Access house area > Remove house
The landlord will be able to access the site, log into their account and go into the houses area, here they will be able to remove any houses that are not available anymore, this would be used when contracts are signed off with students.
Set Viewing Times:
log in > Access house area > Access house > add viewing times
Here the landlord will be able to specify viewing times that students can book, this will be a useful feature because the students will be able to see the available times slots and can book them making them unavailable for other viewings. The landlord can also put the times that are best for them.
Messaging:
Access site>Log in>message students.
The landlord will be able to message certain students about any properties that they have on offer, they will also be able message other landlords for whatever reason.
Accept Booking:
Access site>Log in>Access housing area>Access house>Access booking area.
The landlord will be able to access each of their houses individually and have a look at the times that they have been booked for, they will be able to confirm or cancel their booking times from here saving them time and effort.
Student
Apply for an account:
Access Website > Access Registration Page > Fill in Student Application Form > Send Application
For each student they will have to create their account by logging in using their University information, when they do this they will be able to ask for a confirmation email to be sent out to make sure they have an active email address where people can contact them. Once they have their account they will be able to change any information about themselves.
Searching for a House:
Log In > Access Search Page> Fill out Parameters> Search Database
As this is the main function of the site it will be able to query many different combinations of properties, including how many rooms and/or price range. While the variables change the method is still the same, the user logs into the website in their student account, locates the main search, enters their preferences and then searches for houses within these specifications. When the user finds a house suitable they can click on it to view more details and possibly contact the landlord.
Messaging:
Log In > Find Student, House or Landlord > Send Personal Message
Messaging between student and landlord will play an important part in our website, once the user has found a house, or a landlord has to get hold of a student, they can send a personal message to one another, there shall be a messaging application that will allow this and will be done via university user names.
Photo Tour:
Log In > Pick a Property > View Photo Tour
For a student to get a better idea of what a property looks like inside they can view a photo tour in which photos of each of the rooms can be viewed. This obviously depends on the landlord and whether or not he decides to add his/her house's photos.
Forum:
log in > search forum > create new thread > post replies
Students will be able to log into the forum using their account information in here they will be able to create threads asking questions, post replies to other threads, personally message other forum members and keep others up to date with their house hunt.
Apply for Viewing:
log in > search landlord or properties for house > apply for a viewing for a certain day
The students will be able to find a house that they like after searching for it, once they have a house they will be able to book a viewing time which the landlord has set out. The student will then be able to cancel or change their viewing times if needed.
3.0 Design Analysis - Sam (410191) & Tom (399432)
At the moment we are all aware that there are similar services available to the public though at the moment they are not as specific as we intend ours to be and as with any service it can always be improved. Some of the simplest examples of websites that provide a similar type of content that we came across were:
homesforstudents.co.uk
accommodationforstudents.com
3.1
Comparison to existing products
In order to gain a better understanding of what our service needs to provide we chose to look at the currently available websites and analyse them in order to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses.
How do the other sites work? - Logging in
As soon as you visit the homepage of homesforstudents.co.uk you are given a choice of 3 options, these being:
Search database of student houses
Property reference for the student accommodation
Find student flatmates
Once a student has chosen the city and university they are able to do a more advanced search with some criteria examples being University Area , Property Type Min & Max no. of Rooms etc, essentially allowing them to find a property that is more suited for them.
From looking at the way the searching criteria is structured and how the filtering of results takes places it makes it much more clearer what can be expected to provide a speedy search allowing students to find the right house / flat for them.
We feel that this searching method is adequate and to attempt to improve it would simply result in us “re-inventing the wheel”.
Registing and Logging in
On the homesforstudents.co.uk website, you cannot simply login and view the housing / flat list , it requires a registration process. We feel this could be a disadvantage to the potential tenants / students looking for a house as it requires 5 minutes or so to register with the website. As you can imagine, this could in a sense lose the students interest and thus the service losing its helpfulness.
As we are leaning towards the idea of in some way trying to incorporate students existing hemis number into the service we plan to provide, we feel this will not only save the user time and hassle but also ensuring that they are able to log in quickly and efficiently.
Looking at the service from the landlords point of view, registering is something that cannot be avoided, as landlords are not expected to have any form of hemis number.
Looking more into detail at the landlords section on homesforstudents.co.uk, they have provided a separate login section essentially allowing them to do everything a landlord would expect to be able to do.
This is something we have looked at into great depth and feel we can expand their ideas further. A good example could be contacting a landlord when he / she has a new booking scheduled to view one of their flats / houses in the database. Taking into consideration that maybe some landlords may have less time than others to check for new queries and bookings we believe that involving a SMS system to contact the landlord by text could be very effective, ensuring that they are contacted as soon as a booking has been made by a student.
The main difference between our products and the existing services is that we will provide a specific database for the University of Portsmouth housing list potentially making it far easier and stress free for students looking for available houses / flats . Below is the current service put in place that allows you to download a simple .pdf file holding all the houses currently open to students :
Use of a Forum
If we decide to incorporate a forum board we would essentially be providing another way of communication within our service allowing for topics to be created that is relative to finding a property. A user would be able to login to share/get information from others users whether they be tenants or landlords.
Forums are a good way to allow people to meet as well as having a certain topic based on a distinct matter , for example if a student wished to get some information and background of a certain area someone else could provide a more detailed answer.
Another huge importance in incorporating a forum is the role that it plays in attracting traffic. We believe visitors will want to visit the website in order to see the update of the forums and if any information that has been posted is useful and relevant to what they are looking for.
From using homesforstudents.co.uk we discovered that there is a large amount of functionality we can improve and create of which we have listed the proposed functionality below:
Login/accounts
This is something that the team has considered greatly is allowing the use of Univeristy login details, for example: ecexxxxx - allowing for quicker access as well as eliminating the need to create another account. This could even be incorporated into the universities’ current portal system .
Another huge benefit to the website would be added security, using the hemis numbers provided by the Unversity (Linking student details). This eliminates any security fears and misuse as the account can easily be traced back to the individual student.
Messaging
The sites we have seen so far do not have a messaging system or if they do it is an internal one, we propose not only providing landlord details but the ability to message them via our service which the landlord can choose to have forwarded as a SMS or Email thus eliminating further expenses with call costs and missing calls.
Booking system
We would like to provide a booking system that would allow the tenant to make a booking through the site. The landlord should have full control over this feature in the admin panel (what timeslots, dates etc).
Forum
We feel that this feature would be a better place for students to communicate and find housemates or housing advice as it’s a free and easier environment and more importantly it’s free! This feature is not intended for landlords though they may find it useful if they are looking for specific tenants.
Admin
We intend the landlords and administrators to have their own admin panel through which they would be able to edit any information on any of their properties and change the status as fast and easily as possible. We would also want the administrators to be able to monitor and stop any abuse (through a flagging system).
Photo Tour
This feature would allow the landlords (that chose to do so) to possibly avoid having to book and actual viewing and would allow greater exposure for their property for free.
Modularity
We require our product to be modular in its coding (by this it must be designed so that it can be integrated as easily and efficiently as possible).
We feel that the topics and functions we have discussed above separate our service from what is currently available.
So what does the current Portsmouth list offer?
housing.port.ac.uk
It’s important to also analyse the website currently in place providing students with the housing list, for many reasons, to understand WHY the current service is not suitable and HOW our service can become more beneficial. As you can see, currently the housing list website lacks many things, the main factors being clarity, consistency and any real sense of eye catching aesthetics for the user whether it be student or landlord. As far as the administrators are concerned it makes their job very easy, possibly unnecessary.
Three of the
main things that we will provide to make our service heads and shoulders above the current one is Navigation , Content and the general aesthetics of the website. At the end of the project we aim to provide a good quality service that allows students and landlords to collaborate together ensuring they get the most out of the website by using the features we intend to provide.
3.2
Concept Diagrams & Key Interfaces -
Below is a concept diagram of the site layout, what each page may have on it and what it links to. Red outlines indicate a new page and black outlines indicate a field, option, feature or other element that is part of the the parent page.
below are more detailed layouts of the messaging and Landlord Admin pages, they show what the users will be able to do on the afore mentioned pages.
4.0 Key Cost Drivers - Dan (383428) & Chris (402782)
Introduction
As our product is software based, the main cost driver will be the amount of time that we will need to put into designing, developing and testing the software, to make the product successful.
We will now look at the amount of hours that will need to go into creating the software and distributing it into circulation, using this time frame as a rough guide to calculate the actual cost of carrying out the project.
As we want to create a successful and user friendly website, we will spend a lot of time designing and researching how users will interact with the website, and how our service will benefit them.
We will look at other similar services offered to users who want to search for specific items, the other services that we will look at will be other matching sites such as ebay.com, amazon.com, homeforstudents.co.uk, accommodationforstudents.com.
From viewing the websites listed above, we will research and implement ideas that we feel would be beneficial to our website. We will incorporate many of the features that we feel will benefit our users views and how they will use the website.
Product Design
We will look at the product design in two areas:
One will be the layout and basic functionality of the site; this will be where we consider all of the basic functions of the website, and how we want to incorporate these.
The other will be advanced features; this will be all of the features of the website that will make it more user friendly and have better functionality.
Layout and functionality
As we want to create an easy to use, valuable website, we will spend a lot of time discussing the key features that we will incorporate into the website. Once we have come up with all of the key features we will then work out the layout of the website, to make sure that we have a seamless website we will then work together to create a design that is eye catching, user friendly and appeals to all of the users.
We will spend time discussing layout of the website, colour schemes, styles of buttons, picture placing, logos, navigational structure, searching criteria and the ability for the university to customise the site.
We understand that the layout and functionality will be an important area to focus on. This will allow us to create a site that is aesthetically pleasing and simple to use. We will need to spend time looking into what users want and need. Field research will be needed in order to gain an insight into what users want
Advanced Features
We will also research into the following advanced features:
• Google maps API, we will look at this technology so that users can look at where a specific house is situated, we could also use this technology to incorporate with a basket function on the website so that the users could print one map with all of the addresses of the houses they have chosen to view are.
• Java photo uploading, we will look at this technology so that landlords can upload many photos at the same time, and then the photos would be correctly formatted into the correct size in order to fit the image criteria and then stored in the images folder.
• Viewing scheduler, the functionality will enable landlords to display the times when there will be a showing at the property of choice.
• Messaging facilities, we will use this operation so that all users can message each other about the houses, giving linking to housing choices.
We will be looking at these technologies in order to develop what they can do into our program. To do this we will need to look at both where to include each technology into the website and also how to develop the technology into our code.
Incorporating all of the above will take a lot of time. This will cost time and money when coding these into the website on production. We understand that by incorporating these in the short term will affect the cost of the website, but we feel that these are areas we need to invest in, in order to make our website a success.
Market Research
When carrying out our market research, it was very important to us that we remembered we had three main focus groups for our website, these being Students, Landlords and the Universities. We needed to make sure that the market research we carried out reflected the views and opinions of those using it, as equally as possible, thus allowing us to meet the needs of all people using it
For this we have two primary methods of research;
Our first method of market research will be done through questionnaires and surveys. Here we will ask the potential users of our sites some opened and closed questions, to gain a knowledge and understanding of what the user wants.
Another way we plan to research is through looking at our competition. Here we will look at what other sites have, whether we wish to have these, how to incorporate these ideas and other such design related questions.
Carrying out market research will be one of the biggest costs on time and money.
We see it as very important to understand what the user really wants. We also feel that it is important to keep up to date with the potential competition, so it will be very important to spend time and money addressing this.
Production and Testing
Production
The coding and development are both aspects that will affect the cost significantly, these alone are what we think will take the most time and money during the project. Once we have completed the design stages of our project, the next stage is to begin the implementation of these designs. During the coding and development stages there will also be lots of time will be spent checking progress, as well as comparison to design ideas and the design specification.
Testing
During the designing and development of our website, and once the website is complete, it will need undergo testing. During the testing phase of the sites production we will test it to ensure that the website works as it should. These tests will include testing simple aspects like page to page links, as well as more advanced tests such as
MySQL database queries. The testing will fully scrutinise the system, exposing any flaws, allowing us to rectify them.
This will however be a very long winded procedure, which will take a lot of time and money. The main reason for this to take long is mainly down to the detail that needs to be taken when testing; this alone will take up time. Fixing any problems will also take time and money.
Marketing
One important aspect that we need to consider in terms of cost and time is the marketing of our website. Marketing needs to be considered for a number of aspects of the website. We however most importantly need to look at the marketing and advertisement of our sites to those that will be purchasing the package, most specifically the universities.
Because of this we need to ensure that universities are aware of our product, that they can see what our product brings with it, and the benefits of using our product. The universities will be our main focus, and ensuring they use our product is vital to its success.
We initially intend to market our product to universities local to us. The current student housing services provided to those in Portsmouth is the primary reason for our project, and we feel that they would strongly benefit from our system. This would have a minimal effect on time and cost. We do however feel that the website has scope to be used by all universities, which they could then purchase and implement to be there primary housing system.
Hardware Implementation
The only hardware costs that we will have in order to complete our project will be:
• Server, this will be our server for the website that is used to promote the website.
• Computers, these will be used in order to create the code for the website on, the will also be needed in order to test the website.
Possibilities to Incorporate
When discussing our student housing website, we found that there were a lot of different ideas that we could incorporate to the project. We however decided against including some of them, as we felt we could not incorporate them whilst selling the product as a “package”. Further work that could be carried out once the product has been launched includes maintaining the site for the user, and customisation of the website for the universities. These are cost that we will not factor into the cost drivers.
Maintenance and support is an add-on that as a group we feel could be offered with the package when we sell it on. However to make maintenance and support financially viable it would be an added extra, for which the user would have to pay a subscription. A maintenance and support service subscription would be necessary, in order for us to offer this as a service
Customisation is a further option for us. This could be a service that we will further look into once we have launched the site. It would be down to whether or not we offer customisation and whether or not those universities purchasing the package would like customisation of the website. This is again something that we could charge the universities for, depending on whether or not they are interested.
