1. Chapter 11 Analysis and design

2. Learning outcomes
Summarise approaches for analysing requirements for digital business systems
Identify key elements of approaches to improve the interface design and security design of e-commerce systems

3. Management issues
What are the critical success factors for analysis and design of digital business systems?
What is the balance between requirements for usable and secure systems and the costs of designing them in this manner?

4. Analysis for digital business
Understanding processes and information flows to improve service delivery.
Pant and Ravichandran (2001) said:
‘Information is an agent of coordination and control and serves as a glue that holds together organizations, franchises, supply chains and distribution channels. Along with material and other resource flows, information flows must also be handled effectively in any organization.’

5. Workflow management
Workflow is the automation of a business process, in whole or part during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules
Examples:
Booking a holiday
Handling a customer complaint
Receiving a customer order.

6. Process modelling Often use a hierarchical method of establishing
the processes and their constituent sub-processes
the dependencies between processes
the inputs (resources) needed by the processes and the outputs.
Complete activity using Figure 11.2 and Table 11.2 for how to improve processes.

7. Figure 11.2 An example task decomposition for an estate agency Source: Adapted from Chaffey (1998).

8. Figure An example task decomposition for an estate agency (Continued) Source: Adapted from Chaffey (1998).

9. Figure 11.3 Symbols used for flow process charts

10. Figure Flow process chart showing the main operations performed by users when working using workflow software

11. Figure 11.5 General model for the EPC process definition model

12. Figure 11.6 Generic B2C ER diagram

13. Data modelling
Uses well-established techniques used for relational database design
Stages:
Identify entities
Identify attributes for entities
Identify relationships between entities.

14. 1. Identify entities
Entities define the broad groupings of information such as information about different people, transactions or products. Examples include customer, employee, sales orders, purchase orders. When the design is implemented each design will form a database table.
Entity. A grouping of related data, such as customer entity, implemented as a table.
Database table. Each database comprises several tables.

15. 2. Identify attributes
Entities have different properties known as attributes that describe the characteristics of any single instance of an entity. For example, the customer entity has attributes such as name, phone number and address. When the design is implemented each attribute will form a field, and the collection of fields for one instance of the entity such as a particular customer will form a record.

16. 2. Identify attributes (Continued)
Attribute. A property or characteristic of an entity, implementation as field.
Field. Attributes of products, such as date of birth.
Record. A collection of fields for one instance of an entity, such as Customer Smith.

17. 3. Identify relationships
The relationships between entities require identification of which fields are used to link the tables. For example, for each order a customer places we need to know which customer has placed the order and which product they have ordered. As is evident from Figure 11.6, the fields ‘customer id’ and ‘product id’ are used to relate the order information between the three tables. The fields that are used to relate tables are referred to as key fields. A primary key is used to uniquely identify each instance of an entity and a secondary key is used to link to a primary key in another table.

18. 3. Identify relationships (Continued)
Relationship. Describes how different tables are linked.
Primary key. The field that uniquely identifies each record in a table.
Secondary key. A field that is used to link tables, by linking to a primary key in another table.

19. Figure 11.7 Three-tier client–server in a digital business environment

20. Client–server architecture – separation of functions
Data storage. Predominantly on server. Client storage is ideally limited to cookies for identification of users and session tracking. Cookie identifiers for each system user are then related to the data for the user which is stored on a database server.
Query processing. Predominantly on the server, although some validation can be performed on the client.

21. Client–server architecture – separation of functions (Continued)
Display. This is largely a client function.
Application logic. Traditionally, in early PC applications this has been a client function, but for digital business systems the design aim is to maximise the application logic processing including the business rules on the server.

22. Figure 11.8 Digital business architecture for a B2C company

23. User-centred design
‘Unless a web site meets the needs of the intended users it will not meet the needs of the organization providing the website
Web site development should be user-centred, evaluating the evolving design against user requirements’.
(Bevan, 1999a)

24. Figure 11.9 Elements of customer experience management (CXM)

25. Analysis considerations (Bevan)
Who are the important users?
What is their purpose in accessing the site?
How frequently will they visit the site?
What experience and expertise do they have?
What nationality are they? Can they read English?
What type of information are they looking for?
How will they want to use the information: read it on the screen, print it or download it?
What type of browsers will they use? How fast will their communication links be?
How large a screen/window will they use, with how many colours?

26. Four stages of Rosenfeld and Morville (2002)
Identify different audiences.
Rank importance of each to business.
List the three most important information needs of audience.
Ask representatives of each audience type to develop their own wish lists.

27. Evaluating designs
Smart Insights (2010) lists five types of tools used to continuously gain feedback
Website feedback tools
Crowdsourcing product opinion software
Simple page or concept feedback tools
Site exist survey tools
General online survey tools.

28. Use-case analysis
The use-case method of process analysis and modelling was developed in the early 1990s as part of the development of object-oriented techniques. It is part of a methodology known as Unified Modelling Language (UML) that attempts to unify the approaches that preceded it such as the Booch, OMT and Objectory notations.
Use-case modelling. A user-centred approach to modelling system requirements.
Unified Modelling Language (UML). A language used to specify, visualise and document the artefacts of an object-oriented system.

29. Schneider and Winters (1998) Stages in use-case
Identify actors Actors are typically application users such as customers and employers.
Identify use-cases The sequence of transactions between an actor and a system that support the activities of the actor.
Relate actors to use-cases See Figure 11.12
Develop use-case scenarios See Figure for a detailed scenario.

30. Customer orientation Web users are notoriously fickle:
They take one look at a home page and leave after a few seconds if they can't figure it out.
The abundance of choice and the ease of going elsewhere puts a huge premium on making it extremely easy to enter a site.
Nielsen

31. Customer scenarios and service quality
A customer scenario is a set of tasks that a particular customer wants or needs to do in order to accomplish his or her desired outcome.
Patricia Seybold, The Customer Revolution
I want to...
I want to...
I want to...
I want to...
Successful
Outcome:
Customer
Example:
New customer – open online account
Existing customer – transfer account online
Existing customer – find additional product

32. Site design issues Style and personality + design Site organisation
Support the brand
Site organisation
Fits audiences, information needs
Site navigation
Clear, simple, consistent
Page design
Content
Engaging and relevant
Covered by the 10 principles that follow

33. Jakob Nielsen – www.useit.com
Principle 1 – Standards
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know… Think Yahoo and Amazon. Think ‘shopping cart’ and the silly little icon. Think blue text links’.
Jakob Nielsen –

34. Principle 2 – Support marketing objectives
Support customer life cycle
Acquisition – of new or existing customers
Retention – gain repeat visitors
Extension – cross and up-selling.
Support communications objectives.
Three key tactics
Communicate the online value proposition
Establish credibility
Convert customer to action.

35. Principle 4 – Customer orientation
Content + services support a range of audiences and…
Different segments
Four familiarities
With Internet
With company
With products
With website

36. Principle 6 – Lowest common denominator
Access speed
Screen resolution and colour depth
Web browser type
Browser configuration
Text size
Plug-ins

37. Principle 7 – Aesthetics fit the brand
Aesthetics = Graphics + Colour + Style + Layout + Typography
Site personality
How would you describe the site if it were a person? For example, Formal, Fun, Engaging, Entertaining, Professional
Site style
Information vs graphics intensive
Cluttered vs clean
Are personality and style consistent with brand and customer orientation?

38. Principle 9 – Make navigation easy
According to Nielsen, we need to establish:
Where am I?
Where have I been?
Where do I want to go? Context. Consistency. Simplicity. Use accepted standards for navigation:

39. Navigation (Continued)
Enter by:
user need
product/service
audience type
search
To:
alternate home pages
‘Go with the flow’
Visitor in control
An enjoyable experience
‘Think like a client’

40. Principle 10 – Support user psychology
Hofacker’s five stages of information processing:
Exposure – can it be seen?
Attention – does it grab?
Comprehension and perception – is message understood?
Yielding and acceptance – It is credible and believable?
Retention – is the message and experience remembered?

41. Figure 11.10 Different factors impacting the online customer experience

42. Figure 11.12 Relationship between actors and use-cases for a B2C company, sell-side e-commerce site

43. Figure 11.14 Primary scenario for the Register use-cases for a B2C company

44. Figure 11.16 Site structure diagram (blueprint) showing layout and relationship between pages

45. Figure Site structure diagram (blueprint) showing layout and relationship between pages (Continued)

46. Figure 11.17 Example wireframe for a children’s toy site

47. Figure 11.18 Different types of audience for a typical B2B website

48. Figure 11.20 (a) Narrow and deep and (b) broad and shallow organisation schemes

49. Figure 11.21 Responsive design showing updated layout for different content blocks Source: Author.

51. Figure 11.25 UK information security breaches
Source: BERR (2013).

52. Figure 11.28 Example rules triggered by email in MailMarshal SMTP from Marshal
Source: Marshal Ltd: Reprinted with permission.

53. Figure 11.30 Progression of attempts to combat spam

54. Figure Employee controls Source: DTI (2006) Department of Trade and Industry Information Security Breaches Survey.

55. Figure 11.31 Public-key or asymmetric encryption