1. Gathering Requirements What do users want?

2. Information Gathering Techniques Surveys Interviews Focus Groups

3. Surveys Paper surveys Electronic surveys E-mail –in-text –attachments Web-based –processing data Phone Surveys

4. Interviews Personal –Come prepared –Tape recorder –Open versus Closed questions Phone –Cold call –Selected users

5. Focus Groups Room setting –small versus large groups –moderator –synergy Electronic –Group decision support systems Cost prohibitive –Platform Issues

6. What to Use? Ask some questions –Do users have e-mail addresses? –Can you meet with them personally? –Snail mail addresses only? –Does a Website exist? More than likely use a combination of two or more techniques.

7. Think About What techniques might you use? Team will be asked to provide information gathering techniques, plans and tools in reports. –Initial: tools, techniques, any preliminary results –Final: tools, techniques, results Link to how the Website meets the needs

8. Creating Web Page Forms Paperwork with a New Twist

9. What are Forms? On the Website –input data –guestbooks Behind the scenes –files –databases

10. Behind the Scenes Active Server Pages Common Gateway Interface Script –CGI –receives data from the Web page and then processes the data to create information Server-side

11. Other CGI Uses Hit-Counters Server-side maps Message and Web Boards E-mail lists Cookies

12. CGI Made With... AppleScript C/C++ Perl TCL (Tool Command Language) Visual Basic Java Depends on the System

13. Where to get them... Ask your ISP what CGIs are available In UNIX system, in cgi-bin directory We will use GForm –on homepages.wmich.edu –http://homepages.wmich.edu/documentation/gform/http://homepages.wmich.edu/documentation/gform/ FormMail (v 1.9) at Matt's Script Archive is good as well

14. End-User Side Online Forms –input boxes for text and numbers –radio buttons (option buttons) to select a single option –check boxes to specify an item as present or absent –text areas for expanded input

15. Form Element Each element is a field in the form and will have a value Need the first though Form Elements and HTML layout tags

16. Can use most HTML tags in the FORM to specify layouts and presentation of material

17. Input Boxes –button –checkbox –hidden –image –password –radio –reset –submit –text –textarea

18. Input Box Size and Length Some input boxes (like text) allow you to set their size (in characters) Can also limit the amount of text entered – (in characters)

19. Value Property Can set a default with " " – United States

20. Selection Lists Used to allow a user to view a list and select one or a multiple number of items How many pizzas versus choosing the toppings on a pizza Similar to list tags and

21. Selecting One Item 1 2 3

22. Multiple Items mushrooms olives green peppers anchovies The VALUE and the SELECTED are optional and can be used with both types of lists

23. Selection List Appearance –show more or less of the list –by default shows one item in a drop-down box

24. RADIO party lunch Why Pizza

25. CHECKBOXES Set a default

26. TEXTAREA <textarea rows="value" cols="value" name="text"> default text * Close out the TEXTAREA tag

27. TEXTAREA Example Enter Comments COLS or ROWS optional -- can choose default

28. WRAP Property <textarea rows="value" cols="value" name="text" wrap="option">default text OFF = all text in a single line scrolling off the page VIRTUAL = text wraps automatically in Web window. Still sent to CGI in a single line PHYSICAL=text wraps automatically in Web window. Line wrap info sent to CGI as well

29. FORM Buttons Need to have a means for users to perform actions

30. PROPERTIES How the form is handled. –ACTION –METHOD –ENCTYPE

31. Properties (cont.) Location of CGI script Get versus Post –Get attaches information to the end of the URL specified in the ACTION area (e.g. server-side maps) –Post is the preferred method -- use it with Gform –Post sends the form information as a separate data stream/file

32. ENCTYPE Various options like multiple form data, etc. Default value is text -- what GForm uses

33. MAILTO Can also have the form data sent to an e- mail address instead of a file or a database

34. Most Important Go through the Chapter 6 tutorial Go through the GForm instructions and tutorial (link on Resource Site) Try linking your Gform and making it work –Take my example and modify it on your site Ask Questions