It’s More Than Just Computers

Information systems are the combination of people, information technology, and business processes to accomplish a business objective.

Every information system (IS) has people, processes, and information technology. In fact, many IS professionals add most of their value working with people and processes. They manage the programmers but typically avoid programming themselves. We can represent an information system as a triangle with people, processes, and information technology (computers) on the three vertices. The three parts of an information system are often referred to as the information systems triangle.

Consider the popular trend of letting the TV audience vote on some talent shows such as Dancing with the Stars. The voting is managed by a sophisticated information system. The voters are the people involved with the system. Voters can cast the votes by phone, by text, or by online poll—three different information technologies. A central server at ABC records and tallies the votes. The business processes include the phone, texting, and online procedures—how and when to cast votes, and rules limiting the number of votes from each household.

In November 2010, ABC had to defend the legitimacy of its business processes when detractors claimed that Bristol Palin, daughter of political candidate, Sarah Palin, received an inflated vote tally from Tea Party supporters. Some of these supporters bragged on blogs about how they had circumvented the ABC business processes to record multiple votes for Bristol. ABC claims that it has systems in place to spot and discount suspicious voting activity. They have publicly revealed some, but not all, of these fraud detection systems. At this point we don’t know for sure if fraudulent votes got through. For more on this story see for example: http://insidetv.ew.com/2010/11/19/dwts-bristol-palin-tea-party-voting-conspiracy/.

The three parts of the information systems triangle must interact in concert to realize business objectives. The job of the IS professional is to ensure that a balance is maintained and enhanced for the good of all the actors and the business as a whole.

Good and Bad Information Systems

Information systems professionals work with others to design and customize the systems that you interact with everyday. When you register at a hospital, the information goes into an information system designed to support administrative reporting and insurance processing. When you buy from Amazon.com, the information goes into an information system designed to support customer relationship management.

Every information system is designed to make someone’s life easier. Unfortunately, that someone is not always the consumer. When was the last time that you had a good registration experience at a hospital? That system probably was not designed with you in mind—but rather designed to support backend reporting for the hospital administration and by proxy for the government and insurance companies. So the administrators are happy, but not the customers. From the hospital’s point of view there is no business need to make the registration experience extraordinarily pleasant. They are betting that you will not choose your hospital based on how difficult it was to register.

Amazon.com, by contrast, delivers an extraordinary experience to its customers so that they will stay loyal. Amazon practices user centered design—designing to meet the needs of the user. However, the clever folks at Amazon also have tremendous backend reporting. So it is possible to design systems that please customers and administrators simultaneously—but it takes a bit more effort.

What would hospital systems look like if they were designed to Amazon standards? Imagine 1-click appointments, 1-click payments, shielding the client from the insurance companies. How about an integrated patient record of all past procedures?

The world will continue to gravitate toward Amazon style systems. In the end it is good business to make everyone happy—employees, customers, and administrators. It is also the right thing to do. Think back to the hospital. In a competitive market, maybe you would choose the better customer experience. A hospital worker might choose to work for the hospital with the more user friendly patient information system. No one likes to be yelled at by unhappy customers.

It doesn’t take much to improve the user experience (UX) of a system. You have to design a user interface (UI) anyway—why not make it a good one? In the words of Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?”

Consider the tremendous success of Apple Computer. One of the main advantages that Apple has over its rivals is that it carefully analyzes how people best interact with technology, develops requirements based on that analysis and then designs elegant computers, the iPhone, iPad, iTunes, and so forth based on those requirements.

Google Health, pictured here, has created a user centered patient record—and for free! It will be interesting to see if hospitals adopt it.

Most Professions Use Information Systems

Marketing, accounting, finance, manufacturing – there are many different professional goals and types of work in the business world. There are also many different industries where this work can be performed – manufacturing, retail, banking, healthcare. No matter what your career goal is or what industry interests you, your success and the success of the business rely on your ability to recognize opportunities where information systems can be used to improve performance. In most lines of work, you will need to store information in and retrieve information from databases. You will have to create persuasive and professional reports and presentations to convince others that your ideas make sense. Using Microsoft Excel and other tools, you will analyze data to find patterns and trends to aid decision-making. You will manage your relationships with contacts and clients using customer relationship management systems. The business’s success will depend on you leading efforts that use technology to support the introduction of new products, efficiently manage supply chains, and effectively manage complex financial activities. Retailers rely on past purchase data to develop sales forecasts and predict purchase behavior. Most businesses utilize collaboration technologies to bring together employees from all over the world to solve problems. Your ability to recognize opportunities to use information technology to create business value is central to both your success and that of your firm.

What Does an IS Career Look Like?

A career in information systems is full of action, problem-solving, and teamwork. It is the goal of information systems professionals to bridge the knowledge gap between business users and technologists, and thus IS professionals must be fluent in both worlds. Work in the field of information systems is exciting, fun, and fast-paced. There is always a new team to work with and new technology to learn about, and projects move quickly leaving openings for new endeavors. In a recent report published in The Wall Street Journal, information systems professionals were tied for the highest percentage of college graduates that were satisfied with their career path. See http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/111000/psych-majors-not-happy-with-options?mod=edu-continuing_education.

When preparing to become an IS professional, students focus on learning about the types of systems that exist, what they offer to businesses, best practices for implementation, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Students also focus on how to work with business users and discover what their system needs are and how they can best be served by information systems. Information systems professionals focus on solving problems in businesses through the use of information systems.

When students start their careers, they frequently work on teams that connect businesspersons with the appropriate system solution for their situation. Usually the organizations they work for adopt a set of best practices to create consistency across project teams. Through the use of these best practices, IS professionals determine what options are available, consider the pros and cons of each, design a customized solution to match the specific business, and develop a plan on how to best implement the information system, including rollout phases and training.

As mentioned, IS professionals typically work in teams. This is because the projects are usually very large and have many interworking pieces. As a result, IS professionals specialize in a particular type of work and contribute their expertise in this area. Specializations include system analysts, software developers, database administrators, and project managers.

Information systems as a career is attractive to many individuals because of the traits above. However, it is also engaging because it is a career in which you get to work on making people’s lives easier. IS professionals focus on developing systems that businesspersons will use to create efficiency and increase their performance. IS professionals design systems that help businesspersons make better decisions (decision support systems) and lead organizations (executive dashboards). Systems are also created to keep track of materials (supply chain management systems) and customers (customer relationship management systems). And given the important role of information in modern organizations, IS professionals record, monitor, and analyze data to learn how the business can improve (business intelligence systems). IS professionals work to design these systems to be more usable, more efficient, and more informative. This book will discuss these topics and allow you to experience many of them. It walks you through what it is like to be an IS professional, rather than telling you about it.

1.2 Designing Information Systems

Many Meanings of Design

The key to successful information systems is good design. But what makes a good design? A number of disciplines weigh in on this topic. We will look at design from a number of different perspectives. Whenever possible we will contrast good and bad designs.

Different people use the word design in different contexts. When IS professionals speak of design, they are referring to business processes. Problems must be analyzed and requirements documented before solutions are designed, developed, and implemented. After all if the design does not satisfy the business need, then what’s the point? However, satisfying the business need is really a baseline standard. The vilified hospital system described earlier meets the business need of registering patients. And yet its design is in other ways lacking. Similarly, fast food meets the need for feeding one’s hunger. However, we want to be metaphorically better than fast food in our designs.

Usability describes how easy the system is to navigate. The easier the system is to navigate, the less time a user will need to spend learning to use the system. A more usable system also leaves less room for error. Usability theory provides rules of thumb (heuristics) that document best practice conventions for designing a user interface. Amazon.com has one of the most usable online systems because they follow established conventions. Following conventions tremendously increases the potential acceptance of your website or app.

Graphic design refers to the visual appeal and organization of the user interface. There is obviously some overlap here with usability. Usable systems typically adhere to at least some graphic design rules. However, a usable system could be bland and uninteresting. Employing graphic design principles helps ensure that the system will have visual appeal. Designs also need to fit with the overall brand of the client. Existing colors, fonts, and logos are all a part of the brand for which the system is being created.

Analytical Design describes how to best represent information—especially quantitative information—to communicate clearly and truthfully. Every information systems project has quantitative dimensions associated with project management. These include estimating costs, time schedules, and so forth.

The convergence of usability, graphic design, and analytical design on Yahoo Finance. This graph shows the three month stock price for Amazon vs. Google. From a usability standpoint it could not be easier to request the graph. Type the company name and it suggests the stock ticker symbol. Also, as you move your cursor (the hand), the black dot on the line moves as well, and the numbers on the top left update to display values for the date you are passing over—very slick! The graphic design is excellent—muting the underlying grid so that the data stands out by contrast. The analytical design is also first rate. Hundreds of data points are effortlessly represented. We see the trading volume on each day. At the bottom, the stock price is placed in context over a multi year period. In sum, we have a tremendous amount of information beautifully represented without clutter. Think about this the next time you see an impoverished PowerPoint graph with four bars representing four data points.

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Information systems are designed using the systems development life cycle (SDLC). The SDLC is to a large extent common sense spelled out in stages. First, analyze the current situation. Then specify the requirements that a solution should embody. The next stage is to design a solution (no programming yet). Then the system is developed (programmed) and tested. Finally, the system goes live for the end users as it is implemented in the business setting. To review, the five phases are:

1. Analysis
2. Requirements (vision of future state)
3. Design
4. Development
5. Implementation

In this course we will cover all five stages. However we will focus most heavily on the first three stages for two reasons. First, because that is where IS professionals tend to spend most of their time and second because it is much easier to make changes to a system when in the planning stages, than after code has already been generated.

It is good to frequently interact with the end user and show them screen mockups and a systems architecture diagram of what the final system will look like. The systems architecture is a hierarchy diagram of the flow of the website or app—what the relationship between the pages of the system will be. It is sometimes called a site map. Ideally the systems architecture is done on paper with sticky notes that can be moved around at will by multiple users. A final systems architecture can be represented as a hierarchy chart in PowerPoint.

Once the systems architecture is complete, wireframes or mockups of the individual pages may be constructed. Mockups are non-functioning pages generated in a drawing program such as PhotoShop, Omnigraffle (Mac), or even PowerPoint. PowerPoint turns out to be a fairly respectable mockup tool—especially when working off of some predefined templates.

The SDLC in action. By analogy think of home improvement shows on TV. such as Curb Appeal. They typically follow a similar life cycle when improving a home. The current state of the home is analyzed in consultation with the resident. During this stage the residents reveal their requirements for a solution. For example, they might want a way to interact more with the neighbors. Next the designer produces a plan to meet those requirements. For example, a French door in the living room leading to a front deck from which to interact with the neighbors. Actually blowing a hole through the wall and installing a deck is the development stage. If the design is good and workmanship good, the owner is normally delighted with the solution. At least they seem to be on TV. The illustration below helps to tease out some of the equivalencies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is an approach for designing and developing MIS solutions. It proceeds in stages: analysis, requirements (vision of future state), design, development, and implementation.
• Information systems professionals often make the equivalent of a sketch of the design of the final system. When the sketches are crude they are called wireframes; when they are more refined they are called mockups. However, sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Watch a home improvement show such as Curb Appeal and identify all five stages of the SDLC in the show. About how much time does the show devote to each stage?
2. Read and summarize an article on interface design from humanfactors.com.

Business Process Examples:

• Shopping at a grocery store

  • The deli

    • Taking numbers
    • Rules about which products can be sliced on which machines
    • Rules about wrapping product after slicing

  • The fish counter

    • Taking numbers
    • Rules about how to prepare the fish—head and tail off and so forth.

  • Checkout

    • Scanning and weighing procedures
    • Gathering customer data
    • Printing customized coupons
    • Optimal bagging
    • Taking payment

• Shopping at an online retailer

  • Product display

    • Best selling
    • By price
    • By rating
  • Cross selling—“You might also like…”
  • Shopping cart and checkout processes

• Inventory management

  • Determining the inventory need
  • Reordering with supplier
  • Tracking and receiving shipments
  • Stocking shelves

Note that most business processes subsume other business processes. One of the toughest challenges is knowing what process to focus on and with what degree of granularity to zoom in on the process. Never lose site of the problem you are trying to solve—and use that as your filter.

Introduction

For the purposes of this course we will consider your iPhone app to be a fully functional and marketable product. Now the challenge is to build a store to market the app. Building the store will be a community project. Each student will build a piece of the store. But before we build the store, we need to design it.

Part of the beauty of the iPhone interface is its predictability. All iPhone applications share the same interface elements. Apple ensures this uniformity by reviewing every app before it is published on the iTunes store. It’s not that way on the web. To have uniformity on a website the designer must enforce his/her own design standards. In general the website will be more successful with more repeat business if it follows industry standard conventions for website design. Most of those conventions fall under the heading of usability—literally, how usable or easy to navigate is the site?

The problem with usability is that you only notice it when it is absent. It is like the phone system—it only gets your attention when it doesn’t work. We expect sites to be usable and get upset when they are not. Why then do so many sites have usability issues? Because site designers lose sight of the end user. Mastering some common sense rules or heuristics of usability can go a long way toward making sure that designers create a satisfying experience for the end user.

As you go through this chapter you will note some overlap between usability and graphic design principles. For example, creating contrast between the type and page background is also a usability principle.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

User-Friendly Websites Are in Demand

Web designers have met the need for user-friendly websites by following standard conventions for easy navigation and other site design elements. Internet users should not have to learn how to use a specific site; they should already know how to navigate the site based on prior web experience.

The concept of usability is very familiar to us in other settings. For example, most automobile manufacturers put the pedals, turn signals, and light controls in the same place regardless of car make or model. This way, consumers will not need a tutorial each time they purchase a new car, because they can base their knowledge on previous vehicles. There is also some standardization of icons used in computer operating systems. For example, an icon with a drawing of a printer on it will most likely enable a user to print a document. Similarly, the standardization of websites with regard to usability makes it possible for users to navigate without learning new conventions.

Usability refers to sites that are well-organized, easy to navigate, designed with the consumer in mind, and rigorously tested. These sites allow marketers to deliver the product message to their target markets. Sites that fail to meet these objectives will be abandoned by frustrated users.

Usability also refers to how easy it is to complete tasks, such as purchasing an item or scheduling a meeting. Usability is influenced by site organization, following convention, features of the site, fonts, and colors. Both usability and graphic design are subsets of information design. However, they overlap and reinforce one another.

The most recognizable name in usability is Jakob Nielsen.Nielsen has written numerous books and articles, and has spoken publicly on the subject of website usability. His website is www.useit.com.Yet, Nielsen’s own website sacrifices visual appeal for usability. So are usability and creativity at opposite ends of the spectrum? The solution is to balance the two for the betterment of both.

Ultimately, we need a way to evaluate how usable a site is. Nielsen has developed specific design elements to look for in a website. This site demonstrates how to properly balance usability and creativity in a website.

The Importance of the Homepage

Potential customers typically look at a company’s website before doing business with them. The first site page they come across is the homepage, and the design and usability of the homepage can make or break a possible business deal. The following list compiled by Jakob Nielsen is composed of ten things that can be used to increase the usability of a homepage and, therefore, enhance your website business value.All of these guidelines are quoted from Jakob Nielsen, Top Ten Guidelines for Site Usability, copyright © 2003-2007, ISSN 1548-5552.

Images were placed by the authors to illustrate Nielsen’s concepts.

Usability in Action. The site above exhibits good graphic design and usability. The site below does not.

Make the Site’s Purpose Clear: Explain Who You Are and What You Do

3. Group All Corporate Information in One Distinct Area

Finding out about the company is rarely a user’s first task, but sometimes people do need details about who you are. Good corporate information is especially important if the site hopes to support recruiting, investor relations, or PR, but it can also serve to increase a new or lesser-known company’s credibility. An “About <company-name>” section is the best way to link users to more in-depth information than can be presented on the homepage. [See also my report with 50 guidelines for the design of “about us” areas of corporate websites.]

Usability principles in action: 1. Include a one-sentence tagline. 2. Write a window title with good visibility in search engines and bookmark lists. 3. Group all corporate information in one distinct area.

Help Users Find What They Need

5. Include a Search Input Box

Search is an important part of any big website. When users want to search, they typically scan the homepage looking for “the little box where I can type,” so your search should be a box. Make your search box at least 25 characters wide, so it can accommodate multiple words without obscuring parts of the user’s query.

[Update: Based on more recent findings, my recommendation is now to make the search box 27 characters wide. This and other new guidelines are covered in my tutorial on fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability at the User Experience 2007 conference in Las Vegas and Barcelona.]

Usability principles in action: 4. Emphasize the site’s top high-priority tasks. 5. Include a search input box.

Reveal Site Content

8. Offer Easy Access to Recent Homepage Features

Users will often remember articles, products, or promotions that were featured prominently on the homepage, but they won’t know how to find them once you move the features inside the site. To help users locate key items, keep a short list of recent features on the homepage and supplement it with a link to a permanent archive of all other homepage features.

Usability principles in action: 6. Show examples of real site content. 7. Begin link names with the most important keyword 8. Offer easy access to recent homepage features.

Use Visual Design to Enhance, Not Define, Interaction Design

10. Use Meaningful Graphics

Don’t just decorate the page with stock art. Images are powerful communicators when they show items of interest to users, but will backfire if they seem frivolous or irrelevant. For example, it’s almost always best to show photos of real people actually connected to the topic, rather than pictures of models.

Designing in the Real World—Putting Usability in Context

As important as usability is—it is only a piece of the design process. How are websites designed in the real world? A professional team might include some or all of the following individuals:

• The brand planner devises the marketing strategy.
• The copywriters and designers produce the creative material for the site.
• The project manager schedules the other individuals on the site’s team, determines how much their time will costs and maintains the budget.
• The database manager ensures that the system ties in smoothly with the backend database. Typically, all of the content is stored in a database and then formatted for the screen.
• Usability experts ensure that the information architecture or site organization is logical, customer focused, and consistent.
• The testing members of the team run the site through its paces to catch errors before releasing it to the public.

Usability principles in action: 9. Don’t over-format critical content, such as navigation areas. 10. Use meaningful graphics.

Designing the Class App Store

This chapter has shown examples from the homepage of the Class App store. But what about your pages? To be thematically consistent your pages must follow a consistent structure. The key is to roughly maintain the structure as well as thematic colors from the home page of the store. The user should always be aware that he or she is on the same site. Here is a guide to follow:

Introduction

In this chapter you will create a website prototype to help market your iPhone application. Your prototype will become part of the Class App store. Other students will be able to review and purchase your app online. We are going to build a store together—so let’s get started!

Like the iTunes store, our class store will have separate pages describing each app offered for sale. Those pages will include screenshots of the apps—the same screenshots that you produced with MockApp. Each student developer will make his or her own page and then link that page to the store.

Once all the pages are linked we will have a shopping period during which we will “buy” each other’s apps. We will capture the sales data to see which apps are best selling and highest rated.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Compatibility with Corporate Standards

In the design chapter we talked about how important it is for us to standardize the look and feel for each page in our store so that it indeed looks like a store and not a loosely affiliated and somewhat bizarre collection of pages. However, it is also important that we standardize the development platform so that our store operates seamlessly.

The corporate world tends to be conservative in choosing information systems solutions. In fact corporations usually like to standardize to preserve the brand image and to ensure reliability and ease of maintenance.

Our classroom corporation is no different. Since we will be developing on online store together, it makes sense for us to agree on a common look and feel for each page in the site as well as a common platform for development. Our common platform is Google Sites and your professor may also require that you use a specific theme family on Google Sites to preserve a common look and feel.

Corporations such as Amazon.com have a clearly established corporate identity, which appears on every page. They use an orange and blue color scheme and consistently place navigation elements. Amazon uses a proprietary development tool since they are an industry leader.

Why is standardization so important? Consider that if you create something wonderful in a cutting edge authoring tool and then leave, no one else will be able to update the site you created. More often than not this is exactly what happens when students create websites for small businesses. The business has no way to update and maintain the site in response to business needs. Concern about site maintenance is one of the reasons that businesses are hesitant to engage students to create their websites as a class project even for free.

If given a choice between features and standardization, corporations will almost always choose standardization. We see this in other arenas as well such as office productivity tools. Corporations often mandate that everyone use the same word processor and even the same version! Students are often surprised when they arrive at the workplace to find that corporations live one or two versions behind on word processing software. Every upgrade represents potential costs in software, hardware, training, and lost productivity during training. Unless there is an overriding benefit to be realized, corporations will often choose to avoid the cost. In sum, corporations tend to be very conservative when it comes to software choice.

The corporate world is also happiest when there are clear market leaders to choose from. The last thing that a corporation needs is to invest in software from a company that later goes out of business.

Build vs. Buy

You might well ask why we are building a store rather than using off the shelf software that performs store management. The bottom line is that we want you to get under the hood to see how an information system functions—particularly how it interacts with a database.

Nonetheless, the first decision that a developer needs to make is whether to build or buy a solution for the business problem. To build means creating a customized solution; to buy means purchasing an off the shelf solution. The rule of thumb here is that if your business is similar in nature to thousands of other businesses, then you should buy a pre-built solution. There is no point in reinventing the wheel.

Off the shelf solutions tend to have a number of advantages. They anticipate functionality that your business requires and they are thoroughly tested. Most systems can be further customized to meet the needs of your business. From a support perspective, not only do you have customer service from the company that developed the solution, but you also have a user community that shares tips and tricks. Furthermore, as new versions are released you can improve the functionality and acquire bug fixes for your website with relatively little additional cost.

There are off the shelf solutions for almost any industry you can imagine—from doctor’s offices to construction companies. And the market is competitive, which helps drive down prices. Rather than hire a programmer, many businesses choose to adopt off the shelf solutions. Many of these off the shelf solutions live in the cloud so that the business does not even need to have a server in their office—only workstations to access the data in the cloud. For example www.curvedental.com is a cloud solution for a dental office.

The major disadvantage of off the shelf solutions is that they are limited in how far they may be customized.

If you do choose to build a customized solution from scratch, you still need to choose an authoring tool. Ideally, you want a tool that has some pre-built features that snap together much like Legos. We will employ a user friendly tool provided by Google called Google Sites.

Design View vs. Code View

Because this is an introductory course we want to avoid writing programming code. Fortunately Google Sites is sophisticated enough to allow us to avoid code view. However, we should understand the relationship between what we see on the screen—design view—and the underlying code.

Every webpage is constructed from HTML code. Professionals go to great lengths to refine that code for optimal look and performance. Most professional sites use a suite of products to prepare images for the site, to manage code on the site, to keep the pages organized, and to integrate with the backend database.

Adobe is probably the leading vendor of professional website authoring tools. Many custom built website solutions are authored at least in part with Adobe tools. The following page shows just a few of the many tools available from Adobe in their Creative Suite. The very fact that Adobe packages the tools in a suite is a hint at the complexity involved in creating a professional site.

Professional authoring tools typically have a design view and a code view allowing the developer to switch back and forth between the two. The design view is much like working with PowerPoint. You drag text and graphics where they belong on the page. The code view allows the developer to edit HTML code for even more precise control or the look, feel, or operation of the site.

However, few beginners ever want to see website code nor pay for the sophisticated code editing features. Fortunately, they don’t have to. A number of website authoring tools have been developed over the years to automate the process of code generation and shield users from code view. One of them, Google Sites, is shown on the following page.

But what if you really need a piece of code to accomplish a specific task? Google Sites created an open platform so that developers can create and publish “gadgets,” which can be dropped into your website. Gadgets are like the prebuilt Lego assemblies mentioned earlier. They snap into an existing site. In fact gadgets are to Google Sites what apps are to the iPhone platform. In the same way that the Apple touts, “There’s an app for that,” for almost every iPhone need, just so Google might boast, “There’s a gadget for that,” for many website development needs. And like iPhone apps, some gadgets provide very sophisticated functionality.

Adobe Creative Suite (above) and Google Sites (below) are both website authoring tools. Creative Suite runs on high powered workstations and is used by professionals who need precise control over the look and feel of their site. Creative Suite is really a family of tools including Photoshop, Flash, and others than work well together. Google Sites is a rapid development solution that lives in the cloud. Control is more limited to template based solutions. Development time is much shorter with Google Sites than with Creative Suite. Adobe product screenshot reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Client Side vs. Cloud Development

Our authoring tool, Google Sites, lives in the cloud. Amateur sites and some small businesses tend to prefer cloud based tools for their low cost and ease of use.

Client side toolkits such as Adobe Creative Suite allow all development and testing to take place offline before uploading to the web server in the cloud. By contrast, cloud based tools such as Google Sites require the development to take place in the cloud. Cloud based tools tend to run a bit slower due to internet response times, but the results are instantly published.

The issue on client side vs. cloud development is where the authoring software is located. Client side development takes place on a local computer. Only after the website is thoroughly tested is it uploaded to the cloud for hosting. Almost all professional systems are developed in this way.

There are numerous advantages to client side development, especially for large sites. The developer tends to have greater control over the look and feel of the website. The response time of the computer during development is very quick since there is no delay waiting for a cloud service to redraw the screen. Furthermore, the site is portable. The developer can choose to host it on any computer in the cloud.

Client side authoring tools range in price from free packages such as Pages, which is part of Apple’s operating system, to very expensive packages such as Adobe Creative Suite, which costs hundreds of dollars.

Cloud development tends to have a more template based look and feel. Google Sites is an example of a cloud development tool. The developer has less fine grained control over the look and feel of the website. However, with cloud development it is potentially easier to collaborate and integrate content.

Cloud development tools tend to be free or very low cost. The vendor of cloud development tools recovers their costs by running ads alongside, or even within, your site. In other words, you have no choice but to host your site with the cloud provider. As the page views or business features of the site begin to increase, the cloud provider will begin charging higher fees.

Google Sites: Management

The built in templates and themes are a good start. However, you will want to control the look and feel of the site to match your corporate standards and the brand.

Select Layout for Each Page

In edit mode the content area of each page can be edited. In our experience the layout is best controlled by inserting tables to contain the content.

The Manage Site menu has powerful options that control the look and feel of the site. Changes made from this menu affect every page in the site.

Google Sites: Text, Graphics, Video, and Gadgets

Insert Gadgets

Gadgets can add tremendous functionality to a page. We will use a gadget that captures customer information for customers who sign up for product updates. The gadget is a form that saves to a Google Docs spreadsheet. Google Docs is yet another free Google service that allows you to store and collaborate on documents in the cloud. You access Google Docs by clicking on the Documents link at the top of your Gmail account. Create and save a Form in Google Docs. Documents > Create > Form. Then insert the Form in your web page. Edit Page > Insert > Spreadsheet Form. To test, try visiting the page and filling out the form with some test data. Then return to Google Docs to view the spreadsheet of customers.

There are many other gadgets available from the Edit Page menu including the ability to embed YouTube videos.

The Insert menu is used to insert images and gadgets. If you get the following error message when inserting a gadget answer NO, otherwise you get only part of the gadget—the part that can be delivered securely.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Google Sites tries to simplify the development process by providing pre-built templates for different businesses and themes to control the overall look and feel.
• Gadgets are to Google Sites what apps are to the iPhone.
• You can accomplish most operations in Google Sites without writing a single line of HTML code.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. In what ways is Google Sites similar to a word processor? In what ways is it different?
2. Which repeated elements from the store theme are required to make your page look like part of the store? Explain.

Save Website Data to a File

While the site registration and sale forms are created by the professor, we would like you to have some experience with data integration. Therefore, you will make a form whereby users can register with your site to receive product update information even without making a purchase.

Because the form includes the customer’s email address, the information is a valuable resource for future mass mailings. If used judiciously, such mass mailings are appreciated by customers; if overused they are considered spam.

Google Docs lets you create a form to accept customer information and then stores the information in a spreadsheet. In other words, when you create a form, you get both a form and a spreadsheet automatically.

Start Google Docs

Create New > Form

Complete the form so that it looks similar to the form below. After completing each field you need to click Done. The first two fields are already on the form. To get the third field, check Add item. Then save the form.

Add the form to your web page from the same menu that you use to insert gadgets, calendars, and so forth. Then exit edit mode and practice filling in the form.

Return to Google Docs. You will see a spreadsheet listed with the same name as your form. Open the spreadsheet to view the captured data.

Google Docs allows you to develop an input form, which you can then embed in a page of your website. Data entered into the form by users is automatically saved in a Google spreadsheet. Each user record becomes a new row in the spreadsheet.

L3 ASSIGNMENT: DEVELOP A WEBSITE

In this assignment you create a working website prototype to help market your app. Your site will become part of the class app store.

Setup

Sign on to your Gmail account. Select Sites from the More menu.

Content and Style

• Follow all graphic design and usability principles.
• Follow your design plan. You may make some changes as necessary. However, the bottom line is that you should meet the requirements that you laid out earlier.
• You will be creating three pages in the Class App store. Your logo should appear in the upper left corner of each page.

• Homepage

  • Text describing your app and its features and benefits
  • Show at least six screenshots of your app with a link to purchase the app. For ease of viewing without scrolling horizontally, the screenshots should be in a two row table.
  • Provide a form where people can register for email updates about your product.
  • Provide a link back to the Store in your navigation panel.

• About Us

  • Describe your business soft skills.
  • Include your name, picture, and email address.

• Blog

  • Include at least two entries in the blog. For example, you might describe how you came up with the idea or who the target market is for your product or discuss future plans.

• Extra Credit (if you make it work)

  • Show a real time counter on your home page of how many people have purchased your app. Your counter will use a query similar to that found on the main store site.
• Your pages MUST tie in thematically with the Class App store. You may have an original design, but it MUST be obvious to the user (the grader) that they are still in the same store. Using the same theme or a similar theme family is the most obvious way to do this.
• Register your site with the professor’s online store.
• Embed a working Buy link on your homepage.
• Buy your own app just once to make sure that your Buy link is working. Register for email updates to make sure that your form is working. Check this by viewing the report on your homepage.
• Turn on Google Analytics from the Manage Sites menu using ID number provided by your professor. Do this last after you have thoroughly tested your site.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Post a WORKING link to your website. Paper submission: Create a printout of each screen of your site.

Shopping

After everyone’s site is posted the professor will open the store for shopping. At that point you need to buy 10 apps of your choice.

Introduction

Many businesses need a loan in order to cover startup costs. Many entrepreneurs will turn to family for a loan. However, the danger here is that you are risking not only your family’s money, but also the relationships if the business should go under.

On the other hand, small businesses without a prior track record sometimes have trouble securing a bank loan. Fortunately, there are government agencies at both the federal and state levels that help businesses secure grants and loans.

Loan payments form part of the fixed costs of a business. Determining the payments on a loan is an important part of forecasting costs. The financial formula that calculates loan payments is fairly complex. However, Excel provides an easier way to calculate loan payments using the payment (PMT) function. The PMT function is one of many built in Excel functions. In this chapter we will examine functions, how they differ from formulas, and how to use them in a spreadsheet.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Functions vs. Formulas

In the prior chapter we looked at Excel formulas and how to construct them. In many cases, we want to create our own formulas so we have a clear idea of how the information is constructed.

However, in some cases the formula might involve more complex math where the possibility for error is greater. In these cases it is better to use a built in function that has already been tested and debugged. There are also functions that avoid busywork that you could do yourself but would probably prefer not to do.

On a small scale this is analogous to the build vs. buy issue. Think of formulas as things that you build whereas functions are things that you “buy.” We put buy in quotes because many functions, including the payment function, are bundled with Excel. That is part of the way that Excel maintains its leadership in the spreadsheet marketplace.

Most functions process input to produce a result. Perhaps the most popular function in Excel is the sum (SUM) function, which adds up a long list of numbers. The input for the Sum function are the cells to be added together.

The example below shows the sum function compared with the equivalent formula. The formula is obviously very tedious as it involves adding all the numbers. This is expressed as

=A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10+A11+A12

The sum function accomplishes the same task more simplistically. This is expressed as

=SUM(A4:A12)

Note that in both cases the result is the same: 1,427.

One nice advantage of the sum function is that if we were to add a row in the middle of the list, say between row 7 and row 8, the sum function would automatically expand to accommodate the new row, but the formula would not.

The right way (above) and wrong way (below) to add up a column of numbers. Always try to use the sum function when adding numbers from more than two cells.

The Payment (PMT) Function Calculates Loan Payments Automatically

The payment (PMT) function calculates loan payments automatically. The format of the PMT function is:

=PMT(rate,nper,pv) correct for YEARLY payments

• Rate is the interest rate, usually expressed as an annual percentage rate (APR). If payments are made once a year then just plug in the APR. However, payments are usually once a month. So you need to divide the rate by 12.
• Nper is the number of payment periods. Again, if payments are made once a year then nper is just the number of years of the loan. However, payments are usually once a month. So you need to multiply the nper by 12.
• Pv is the present value of the loan, in other words the loan amount today.

Adjusting for monthly payments produces this modification of the function:

=PMT(rate/12,nper*12,pv) correct for MONTHLY payments

By the way, you can use the PMT function to calculate payments on car loans and home mortgages. In case you are curious, the actual mathematical formula that the PMT function translates to looks like this:

Payment = pv* apr/12*(1+apr/12)^(nper*12)/((1+apr/12)^(nper*12)-1)

Note that it is hard to even follow a complex mathematical formula when it is written in Excel.

The payment (PMT) function in action. The wording in this illustration is taken directly from U.S. federal guidelines for loan disclosure. The PMT function is used to calculate the monthly payment—in this case $101. The function references three other numbers in the same illustration. Years is multiplied by 12 to get the number of payments (nper), APR% is divided by 12 to get the monthly interest rate, Amount Financed is the present value (pv) of the loan—the amount you are borrowing.

The Payment (PMT) Function

In the United States, the federal government places requirements on the actual wording of a loan. This wording is reflected in the illustration below. The intention is to force lenders to be honest about the terms of the loan and to allow buyers to comparison shop loans.

Note especially the finance charge . This number is what people normally understand to be interest on the loan. It is the cost you pay for the privilege of borrowing the money. Now you might be wondering why this number is so high. After all 8% of $5,000 is only $400 not $1,083. The interest compounds or grows because the loan has been stretched out over five years.

First time home buyers are often shocked to find that their finance charge actually exceeds the amount of the loan. In other words, over the life of the loan they end up paying around twice the closing price of the home. Home loans have higher finance charges because they are often stretched out over thirty years—which is a lot of time to compound interest. Similarly, if we were to stretch our $5,000 business loan out over thirty years, the finance charge climbs to $8,208, which exceeds the amount of the loan.

Here the same $5,000 loan is shown under different loan terms. The second loan increases the interest rate to 20%, but leaves all else unchanged from the original. The third loan increases the term of the loan to thirty years but leaves all else unchanged from the original. The lesson here is to borrow at as low an interest rate as possible and for as short a time as possible.

So the bottom line is that you should borrow money for as short a time as possible to avoid large finance charges.

By the way, the situation is even worse with credit card loans because the interest rate on credit cards is so much higher—around 20%. Note how at 20% the finance charge climbs to almost $3,000 over five years. Your goal should be to pay off your credit card in full at the end of each month. If you do not have enough money to do this, then you should try to modify spending habits so that you reach this goal.

L2 ASSIGNMENT: INCLUDE LOAN PAYMENTS IN FORECAST

Include loan payments in your previous forecast of revenues and costs.

To make the problem more realistic we bring in loan payments as an additional fixed cost. To help in decision making we conditionally format the sensitivity analysis.

Setup

Open your workbook file from the L2 assignment of the prior chapter, re—save it under a different name, and then modify it to look as below.

Content and Style

• Add an assumption for the Loan Payment.
• Add an assumption for the Desired Profit by Year 5.
• Name each number in the assumptions area.
• Use those names in calculations in the spreadsheet below.
• Follow best practice design techniques in this chapter.
• Only the first number in each column gets formatted as CURRENCY. (Do not format as ACCOUNTING.) Update the format using the Number Formatting Technique. All other numbers greater than 1,000 should be in Comma style.
• Include a copyright symbol with your name at the bottom.
• Produce a sensitivity analysis table of total profit/(loss) as a function of growth rate and price per unit.
• Conditionally format all profit scenarios that meet or exceed the desired minimum profit by year 5 listed in the assumptions area. Conditional formatting is located on the Home screen in Excel. Follow the prompts.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the workbook electronically.

Paper submission:

• The worksheet grid lines will not appear on the printout.
• Print out both the results and formulas. The formulas printout shows the formulas in each column. Reveal the formulas by typing CTRL+ ~. Adjust the column widths to closely crop the formulas by dragging the separator between each column in the gray header area.
• Both printouts should use landscape orientation, which may be accessed from Page Layout > Page Setup > Orientation > Landscape. Each printout should fit on one page. Choose Page Layout > Scale to Fit > Height: 1 page; Width: 1 page.

Add assumptions and columns as necessary to accommodate loan payments.

Introduction

Before launching a business venture with your capital, or someone else’s, it is a good idea to analyze the overall attractiveness of the industry. An industry analysis makes no reference to your particular company. In other words, how likely to succeed would any new company be in this industry? Are there parts of the industry that are more attractive than others?

Loan officers or investors especially, are going to want to see an analysis of the industry. One thing they will look for is growth potential. If you can show that the industry is rapidly growing, you may get funding. From an investor’s point of view, they might simply want to have a dog in the race—even if your company is not necessarily the best dog overall—it may still be the best dog on hand.

One can establish growth potential by showing trends over time. For apps this would include showing growth in sales of apps and the platforms on which the apps run—iPhone, iPod, iPad.

If your app duplicates functionality found in another device, a turn by turn GPS for example, then you could show growth in the GPS industry. You might also want to show growth of competing platforms and apps such as the Droid. However, you should be honest and straightforward about your statistics. Investors are smart and can see through hype and deception.

This chapter will also look at two tools used to perform industry analyses—S.W.O.T. and Michael Porter’s five forces model.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Industry Analysis – SWOT and Porter’s

The content of an industry analysis depends on the purpose of the report. There is no one size fits all. However, if the business is seeking funds, investors will at a minimum want to see two things:

• Industry analysis: An analysis of the industry in which the company operates. What are the opportunities and threats inherent in the industry?
• Company analysis: An analysis of the competitive position of the company within that industry. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the company?

There are a number of analysis techniques designed to get at both the industry and company analysis. We will look at just two:

The first is very popular in the marketing discipline. It is an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (S.W.O.T.) analysis developed by Albert Humphrey in the 1960s. The strengths and weaknesses compose the company analysis, whereas opportunities and threats compose the industry analysis. Using terms from the SDLC, you can consider the strengths and weaknesses as describing the current state of the company. The proposed future state of the company will be planned taking into account the opportunities and threats. It is conventional to show a S.W.O.T. analysis in a four cell grid.

Another very popular analysis tool is Michael Porter’s five forces model. (Porter, M.E. (2008) The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy, Harvard business Review, January 2008). Porter analyzes an industry by looking at how hard it is to get in the industry (barriers to entry), stay in the industry (threat of substitutes), and the bargaining position of suppliers to and buyers of industry products and services. This helps identify the attractiveness of the industry. You might think of Porter as helping to direct our focus to where the opportunities and threats might be found. The fifth force is the competitive position of industry rivals—their strengths and weaknesses.

An analysis of the iPhone app industry using S.W.O.T. analysis (above) and Porter’s five forces model (below). Both models overlap in their analyses.

For example, with respect to your iPhone app, you might argue that barriers to entry are very low. There are thousands of iPhone developers and it cost relatively little to develop an iPhone app. The threat of substitutes includes the competing Droid and other smart phones and apps.

Suppliers to your industry include Apple, which supplies the iTunes store for distribution and the developers. Apple’s bargaining power is very high since you must list your app on their store and pay their commission. However, the bargaining power of developers is relatively low since they compete in an open auction for your business.

The bargaining power of buyers is very strong since they can purchase from you or any of your competitors. The only thing that makes this industry attractive is that it is growing at such a phenomenal rate that there are business opportunities even for weak players. As the industry matures, the weaker players will probably get squeezed out.

Introduction

Graphs are regularly used for presentations in corporate board rooms. The most prevalent use of corporate graphs is to show trends over time, such as sales per quarter. These graphs are especially popular when the trend is on the rise.

A problem with graphs that show trends over time is that they show the changes in trend patterns, but they fail to show the reasons for these changes. One solution is to annotate a time series graph to point out the causal event.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. The Oscar winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, warns of the dangers of global warming. The film uses many illustrations and graphs, similar to the ones you will create in this course. Many of them show before and after comparisons. At one moment in the film, Al Gore, dramatically ascends, using an hydraulic lift, to point on a giant screen to high projected levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The message is far clearer than numbers alone would ever show. In the entire history of the earth, the red line (carbon dioxide) spikes disturbingly when man began burning fossil fuels with the advent the industrial revolution. And the situation is quickly getting worse.

Watch the movie trailer for An Inconvenient Truth at:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_classics/aninconvenienttruth/

Other business uses of graphs are to show relative amounts visually. This is especially helpful when the numbers are large and hard to relate to. David McCandless has produced a series of fascinating graphs that help to explain trends. You can see some of his work at:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/

Analytical Design

There are sound principles for the display of quantitative information. Perhaps the greatest theorist in the quantitative arena is Edward Tufte. He has written a number of books and articles on the subject and draws huge audiences world wide when he speaks.

Tufte virtually founded the field of analytical design—the field that studies how best to represent information—especially quantitative information. He has developed a number of principles over the years. However, in his latest book, Beautiful Evidence, Graphics Press, 2006, he organized the principles under six major headings:

1. Show comparisons, contrasts, differences. Comparisons inform and invite reflection by the reader. For example, showing the growth rate of platforms using the Mac iOS vs. other smartphone operating systems helps show if the market is growing or shrinking.
2. Show causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure. Sometimes the data clearly suggest a cause or lack of a cause. For example, many predicted a drop in iPhone 4 sales after news that the antenna dropped calls when held in a certain way. But the predicted sales drop was not borne out by the data and the product launch was wildly successful.
3. Show multivariate data. That is show more than one or two variables. The more variables graphed, the greater the chance of providing a clear causal explanation. For example, better to show sales of paid apps and free apps per platform.
4. Completely integrate, words, numbers, images, diagrams. Tufte sometimes calls this “whatever it takes.” Annotate your graph if that helps explain the data. For example on a time series label key events.
5. Thoroughly describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and sponsors, document the data sources, show complete measurement scales, point out relevant issues. For example, always show your data sources and list your name as a author. If the data only holds under certain conditions, then state what those are.
6. Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance, and integrity of their content. This may be the most important principle of all. If your content is bad then nothing will save it. Try to tell the truth at all costs.

Analytical design in action. In the graph above, 96 data points are easily represented showing the market share for smartphone operating systems. From this, one can see the rapid rise of the Android OS. Below only twelve data points are graphed. The data shows that free apps are downloaded far more frequently than paid apps. However, the greatest market for paid apps is on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Both graphs would be improved if their legends were eliminated and the data series were instead labeled directly. Source for both graphs is Admob.com.

Graph Design Principles

Notice the graphs on the following page. The “after” graph has six design improvements over the first. They deal specifically with formatting the graph to maximize information transfer to the reader. Most of the graph design guidelines come from Edward Tufte’s principles of analytical design. These principles require refining the graph after Excel has applied its default settings. The exercises in this chapter provide instructions on how to carry out these refinements.

Though the design of a graph is important, the content is even more crucial to the delivery of information. Graphs can have good design, but if the data or content is flawed, the graph has no purpose. The data on the X and Y axis of a graph should always have some correlation, or some relationship that can be demonstrated.

Before—while this graph looks cool, there is no scale. What quantities do the bars represent?

After—even though this graph is somewhat dull, it conveys information far more effectively.

Matching Graph to Data Type

After you establish the integrity and relevance of the content, you will next need to focus on the type of graph you will use to display the information. Most business graphs (bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts) compare categories on a quantitative dimension. For example, comparing salaries for persons of different education levels.

Bar graph. Bar graphs are used to compare discrete categories on a common measure. In other words, the measure is quantitative and the categories are qualitative. For example, compare sales figures (quantitative) in different geographic regions (qualitative).

Line graph. Line graphs compare continuous categories on a common measure. They are often seen in business, especially to show trends over time. The time appears on the X axis, and the quantitative data to be measured appears on the Y axis. Examples are sales, stock market trends, or mortgage rates over time. A text box is often placed near these graphs to explain the reasoning behind changes in trends.

Pie chart. Much like a bar graph, a pie chart compares discrete categories on a common measure. Unlike a bar graph, a pie chart can only show one series of data. Although pie charts are commonly used in the media, a bar graph is a better way to convey the same information in a way that allows for much easier comparisons between categories. The relative height of bars is easier to compare than pie slices that must be mentally rotated and aligned for comparison. Bar graphs also allow for multiple data series to be compared on the same graph, but pie charts are limited to one data series. Overall, pie charts should be avoided.

Scatterplots. Scatterplots do the best job of adhering to Tufte’s principles of showing multivariate data and causal relationships. In a scatterplot, both sets of data are quantitative. The cause (independent variable) appears on the X axis, and the effect (dependent variable) appears on the Y axis. For example, in economics, scatterplots can be used to show trends in price versus demand. Greater demand for a product or service (independent variable) leads to higher price (dependent variable). In spite of their explanatory power, scatterplots are rarely found in business.

Bar Graph – Compares categories

Line Graph – Shows trends

Scatterplot – shows causal relationships

Challenger Disaster: A good graph may improve decision making

The Space Shuttle Program had its first successful launch in 1981. From the beginning NASA made “caution” a buzzword in the program. As just one example, five separate computers were onboard performing identical tasks. A pre-launch failure of even one computer would delay a launch. The Challenger launch had already been postponed twice due first to a malfunctioning door and then due to high winds. The media ridiculed NASA’s inability to launch on schedule. The night of January 28, President Reagan was scheduled to go on national TV to deliver his State of the Union Address. He was expected to mention the launch of the first civilian into space, a school teacher from Vermont named Christa McAuliffe.

The shuttles are launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Normally temperatures at the Cape are very moderate. Even in January the mean temperature is 60° F. However, a blast of Arctic air occasionally extends down to northern Florida. Such was the case on January 28, 1986, the launch date of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Temperatures on the morning of the launch were forecasted to be between 26 and 28° F, far below the prior coldest launch temperature of 53° F.

The temperature at launch is significant because it can potentially affect the performance of rubber parts on the shuttle. During the night preceding the launch, there was an eleventh-hour debate on the wisdom of launching between NASA and Morton Thiokol. Thiokol was the contractor for the two solid fuel rocket boosters that help propel the shuttle into orbit. The boosters are made in segments that interlock. At the point the segments meet, two rubber O-rings help seal the joint. The prior coldest launch and, indeed, every launch under 66° F had experienced some amount of compromise to the O-rings. However, there were also cases, though few, of O-ring damage at warmer temperatures. Thiokol engineers feared that the rubber would harden in the cold weather, thereby compromising its ability to seal the joint. The engineers were correct but not persuasive. Unable to substantiate their claim with data, the engineers caved under pressure from NASA and signed off on the launch.

The Challenger and its seven-member crew were lost 73 seconds after launch when the O-ring failure caused the booster rocket to explode.

On the eve of the launch engineers tried to explain the problem with a diagram. Their concern was that escaping hot gases would erode or eat away at the rubber O-ring seal. Sufficient erosion would release a flood of hot gases, sort of like a break in a dam. That was what happened to Challenger and it was catastrophic.

There were 24 successful launches prior to Challenger. However, the entire discussion centered around only two previous launches, SRM 15 and SRM 22. SRM stands for Solid Rocket Motor. SRM 15 was a cold weather launch with erosion. SRM 22 was a warm weather launch with blow by (soot but no erosion). Unfortunately, in the debate, erosion and blow by were put on equal footing, leading one engineer to conclude, “We had blow by on the hottest motor and blow by on the coldest motor.”

You will note that when the engineers reversed their no launch recommendation, it was not because they had new evidence, but rather because their existing evidence was too limited to be conclusive. The moral of the story is to always look at the entire data set.

What does the entire data set show? Damage rarely occurs at warm temperatures, but damage always occurs below 66°F and worsens the colder the temperature.

Christa McAuliffe, school teacher, was chosen by President Reagan to be the first civilian in space. Here she is being tested for weightlessness tolerance before the launch. Image reprinted from www.nasa.gov.

Tufte recommends showing ALL the data when making a decision—but showing it in a meaningful way relating cause and effect. He feels that the this graph, had it been made, would have stopped the launch.

Frigid launch pad on the morning of launch. Image reprinted from NASA Johnson Space Center.

Frozen O-ring fails to seal-fire burns through. Image reprinted from NASA Johnson Space Center.

L1 ASSIGNMENT: S.W.O.T. AND PORTER’S

As part of your industry analysis create S.W.O.T. and Porter’s five forces analyses of the iPhone industry

Setup

Start up PowerPoint.

Content and Style

• Follow all best practice formatting and design techniques.
• Use a PowerPoint table for the S.W.O.T. analysis. Merge cells and control text formatting to match the example.
• If you choose to use colored backgrounds, make sure that they have sufficient contrast with the text.
• Use appropriate PowerPoint smart art for the Porter’s analysis.
• Create one slide for each diagram.
• No matter how good a diagram, it needs explanation. Save enough room on each slide to include a paragraph that tells the reader what message should we get from the diagram. Draw conclusions—do not just summarize the slide.
• Add copyright and your name to each slide.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the PowerPoint file electronically.

Paper submission: Please print out the slides.

Sample templates for the S.W.O.T. assignment (above) and Porter’s assignment (following).

L2 ASSIGNMENT: SHOW APP TRENDS

As part of your industry analysis create a graph from iPhone app sales data.

Setup

Download the iPhone App Sales Data and create a time series line graph.

Content and Style

• Follow all best practice formatting and design techniques.
• Adjust scales to match the graph.
• Add text boxes, rectangle and arrow where required.
• Add copyright and your name under the source.
• Do not recreate the word “sample.”

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the Excel workbook electronically.

Paper submission: Please print out the graph in landscape orientation.

Sample graph for the Show App Trends assignment.

Introduction

In order to make strategic decisions about which products to feature in our store, we need to carefully analyze the sales and clickstream data. This type of data analysis is one form of business intelligence.

If there is one thing plentiful in the world today, it is data. At the heart of every information system is a database that captures transactional data. For example, who bought what, when, for how much, and so forth. It is useful to know about the architecture of the transactional systems so that it is not a complete mystery how the data is captured.

However, it is critical to know how to distill and analyze the captured data in order to make managerial decisions. For example, after summarizing thousands of records we might find a product selling particularly well with women in a particular age range living in a particular area. That meaningful information could be actionable in terms of the supply chain and marketing initiatives.

If anything in the world today there is perhaps too much data. Distilling that data into meaningful information is a key skill. There are a number of tools available to perform data analysis. These include spreadsheet programs such as Excel and database systems such as Access. Learning to use these tools will enhance your marketability.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Kiva: Summarize Data to Produce Information

To illustrate the power of summary data, we will first show how it can be used as a marketing vehicle for a website. Impressive statistics can help encourage repeat business. The same marketing principles operate even for nonprofit organizations.

Kiva is a website that lets you make small loans (typically under $500) to entrepreneurs in developing countries. The field of small loans is called microfinance. Microfinance institutions are an incredibly important resource to help third world citizens rise out of poverty. Surprisingly, the repayment rate of the world’s poor ranges from 95 to 98%, far higher than the loan repayment rate in the United States. Over 80% of Kiva’s loans are made to female entrepreneurs. They invest profits back into the businesses and improve the lives of their families.

Kiva works by pooling resources so that for example 50 people could lend $10 each to total $500. As part of its marketing effort Kiva maintains fast facts about their activities to date. For example, they report that they have nearly half a million lenders who together have lent $161 million dollars over the last three years. These fast facts are gathered from the website’s database after scanning millions of records and represent business intelligence. Not only does the information serve a marketing purpose, but it is also an internal scorecard to track the progress of Kiva’s mission and influence decisions.

Kiva’s Facts and History page is a business intelligence report. Note the sentence that appears under “Latest Statistics,” which announces that the statistics are updated nightly (between 1 – 3 am). This is typical of business intelligence systems. Searching millions of records puts such a drain on the system that these activities are usually run during off peak hours.

What Is Business Intelligence?

The Kiva example is a form of business intelligence . Business intelligence (BI) is the delivery of accurate, useful information to the appropriate decision makers within the necessary time frame to support effective decision making.

By this definition all the work we have done with Excel would qualify as business intelligence since our deliverables contained accurate and useful information to support effective decision making. However, business intelligence is commonly understood to include distilling and analyzing large data sets such as those found in corporate databases. Extracting and analyzing information stored in databases is the subject of this chapter. It is very likely that at multiple points in your work career you will be asked to engage in just this type of analysis.

Business intelligence is part of the big picture information systems architecture. Most systems in existence can be classified either as enterprise systems, collaboration systems, or business intelligence systems. The enterprise systems—taking orders for example—feed their data to the data warehouse, which in turn is queried to support business intelligence.

From a managerial standpoint, there are three factors necessary to make an effective decision:

1. Construct a set of goals to work toward.
2. Determine a way to measure whether a chosen path is moving closer or farther from those goals.
3. Present information on those measures to decision makers in a timely fashion

For example, let’s say our goals are to develop a clothing business that produces high quality products while lowering costs. We further determine that we will measure product quality by the percentage of products rejected by inspectors at each station. (Think about those inspector 99 tags that you find in pockets of your new clothes. The clothes you are wearing are the ones accepted by the inspector.) A relatively high rejection rate is a red flag to management requiring further analysis. Is this an overzealous inspector? Is there any pattern to the rejected products? Does one station in the factory tend to produce more rejects than the others?

We also need to see performance over time. Is product quality improving or getting progressively worse?

Let’s say that our analysis determines that the high rejection rate comes from just one factory in Southeast Asia. We report the problem to management. They dispatch a team to review the plant. The review discovers child labor, abusive conditions, and very low morale at the plant. The horrible conditions are quickly reversed and the rejection rate returns to average.

Business Intelligence: Analysis of App Sales Data

The business intelligence portion of the information systems architecture. Note that business intelligence systems typically operate off of a data warehouse—a repository of data for the corporation. Each enterprise system contains one or more databases. The contents of those databases is routinely copied into the data warehouse to enable the BI analysis. The process of copying is called extract, transform, and load (ETL).

Business Intelligence Process

We will look at three types of business intelligence—static reports, dynamic reports, and data mining.

Static reports are by far the most common form of business intelligence. Most businesses have summarized standard reports already laid out and printed to assist in managerial decision making. For example, universities use enrollment reports to gauge which departments might need to hire more faculty. Credit card companies will request reports of persons with high credit scores to target credit card promotions. Similarly, the companies might target college students with good future earning potential. Marketers might look at sales figures for different stores and regions to determine where there are opportunities to run a sales promotion.

Dynamic reports look similar to static reports but online and interactive. A manager curious as to where a certain summary number on his dashboard comes from can drill down to expose the detail that contributed to that number. In essence it is a fact finding tour where information discovered in each step gives clues on where to search next for information. For example, if sales in North America are down, then drill down to discover a problem in the Midwest region. Then drill down farther to discover a problem in the Cleveland, Ohio plant.

Data mining uses computer programs and statistical analyses to search for unexpected patterns, correlations, trends, and clustering in the data. In essence, it is fishing through the data to see if there are patterns of interest. One often cited example of data mining was the discovery that beer and diapers are frequently purchased on the same trip to the grocery store. Upon further inquiry marketers discovered that Dad picks up some beer on his trip to the grocery store to buy diapers. Marketers can use this information to place the two items in close proximity in the store.

The business intelligence process for dynamic reports is depicted here. The top half of the diagram shows how data finds it way into the data warehouse through the extract, transform, and load process. The dynamic report begins with an executive dashboard providing a high level view of the business. The dashed red arrows represent drilling down to find a reason for a pattern in the data. In this example, a downturn in North American sales is traced all the way back to a Cleveland, Ohio plant.

Introduction

In all of the forms of BI described above, you must actually store data to analyze. Organizations store their data in databases connected to their production systems. Here are some examples:

• Banking transaction systems store data in databases containing information about customers, accounts, and transactions against those accounts.
• University enrollment systems store data in databases containing information about students, faculty, courses, and enrollment in those courses.
• Cell phone billing systems store data in databases containing information about customers, rate plans, and calls made.
• Credit card billing systems store data in databases containing information about customers, credit plans, and items charged.
• Supermarket checkout systems store data in databases containing information about customers, products, and buying habits of their customers. The loyalty card that you have swiped at the checkout ties all your purchases back to your name.

What do these databases actually look like? They consist of tables of data that are related to each other. This is called a relational database. Each table must have a unique identifier that is called a primary key. The database is organized into parent and child tables to avoid duplicating data. Data common to each child is stored in the parent table. Diagrammatically a parent table points to its child tables. Each parent record can have zero or more child records. To logically link the tables together simply repeat the primary key as a foreign key in each corresponding record of the child table. To get information in and out of a relational database requires a relational database management system (RDBMS) such as Microsoft Access. The goal of the system is to facilitate transactions while safe guarding the integrity of the data.

The theory behind database design is one of the most elegant areas in all of information systems. If you continue in information systems, you will see it in detail. However, for our purposes all we need to know is that data is typically stored in multiple files even if the report that we get is contained in a single file. Why? The simple answer is that we want to avoid duplicate data by storing information common to each child in the parent table. Why do we care? Because duplicate data opens up the possibility that one of the duplicates will be different in an important way. For example you would not want your bank balance to be sometimes one number, sometimes another depending on which record happens to be called up by the database.

The data from the Class App store is stored in a relational database consisting of two tables—an APP table and a SALES table. The primary key of the APP table is App name. The primary key of the SALES table is the combination of Timestamp and App name. App name in the SALES table is also a foreign key linking each sale with its corresponding App.

Architecture of Class App Store

The Class App store created for this course has at its heart a simple database. Nonetheless, that database supports some fairly sophisticated functionality. The beauty of the Class App store is that it was created almost entirely without writing code, by using Google Sites and Google Docs.

The database consists of two tables—an App table and a Sales table. The App table captures registration information about each app. The Sales table captures sales information—who bought what and when.

Conceptually the tables are linked by what is called a one to many relationship. One app has many sales. Every database has one to many links of this sort. The relationships are formed by the primary key to foreign key correspondence.

Once the architecture is established the next step is to get data in and out of the database. Data is entered into a database using forms. For the App table, use the Register App form. For the Sales table, use the Purchase App form.

Data is extracted from the database using reports. The listing of apps on the Class App store home page is a report.

When the reports involve summary data, we would characterize that as meaningful information. For example, listing the best selling apps and the top rated apps qualifies as information. The number of apps purchased by each student is also information—it reveals how many students have completed the assignment.

And there are a variety of reports that can come out of even a simple database such as this. For example, a report might list the best selling apps for men who are freshmen. One can be quite specific as to the information extracted for analysis.

Architecture of the Class App store. Even this simple database requires two forms and four reports.

Group and Summarize Data

We will analyze the sales data for our own app store to find trends in buying patterns for the class. Distilling that data and finding meaningful patterns is a form of business intelligence.

The important concepts here are to group and summarize data, and then to order and compare groups. For example, showing a list of the best selling apps. Creating this list requires counting total sales for each app and then listing those totals in descending order.

To do this in real time requires sending a query to the store typically written in a language called Structured Query Language (SQL). This is how we were able to get the store to display tables of best selling and top rated apps. The query looks similar to this:

select App, count(Timestamp)

group by App

order by count(Timestamp) desc, App asc

Translation: select the app name and count the number of records (timestamps) for that app. Produce a subtotal (group by) for each App name. Then order the subtotals in descending order. If two apps have the same subtotal, then order them alphabetically.

However, SQL is beyond the scope of this course. What is within the scope of the course is to download and analyze the data in a spreadsheet. Database data can be downloaded and then analyzed using Excel pivot tables. A pivot table is a visual query tool that allows you to answer sophisticated questions without writing any SQL code.

Data is sorted by timestamp above left and by app above right. However, neither sorting produces useful information. Left we download and then group, summarize and sort the data by sales in descending order to reveal the top selling apps. This is meaningful information. “Count of Email” means that we are counting the number of email addresses registered for each app. We count emails since they are unique whereas names might not be. This analysis is performed using an Excel pivot table on the downloaded data.

Multi-Table Databases

The problem with one table databases is that we are limited to querying the data that happens to be in that table. For example, there is no way to see which developers bought their own apps. The sales data here shows only the buyer not the seller. The seller data is stored in a different table. What we need is a way to join information between the two tables. While joining information between tables is possible to do with a spreadsheet (using the Vlookup operation), it is rather difficult and is error prone. The best practice way to accomplish a join is using a database system such as Microsoft Access.

The magic of database systems is that they are able to make data that lives in separate tables appear to reside in the same table. Once the data appears to reside in a single table, then all of the query techniques that apply to one table databases become tools for analysis.

The APP table above and the SALES table below. A relational database is able to integrate information between the two tables.

Data Warehouse

As with many subjects in the course, it is more complicated than that. It would be relatively rare to pull business intelligence data from a live database. The drain on the system might slow down the entire business and thereby frustrate customers. Instead, corporations typically copy data from their databases into a repository called a data warehouse. The warehouse can then be queried repeatedly without affecting the production system.

Periodically, perhaps once a day, data is copied from the company’s many databases to a very large database called the data warehouse. The process of copying the data is called extract, transform, and load (ETL).

• Extract — Copies data from one or more databases systems.
• Transform — Cleans the data so that related records in different databases appear in a consistent format.
• Load — Inserts the cleansed data into the data warehouse.

Why go to all this trouble? One of the main reasons is that analyzing the data on the production system would slow it down considerably leading to poor customer service. Another reason to copy the data is so that multiple databases can be merged into a single data warehouse.

It is the data warehouse that is analyzed to produce management reports.

Note the role of the data warehouse as the central repository for all the business intelligence data.

Latency is the amount of time between the occurrence of a transaction and the loading of that transaction’s information into the business intelligence system. In other words it is the amount of time that passes before a manager has a distilled report in hand analyzing the operation. Some mangers are content to get a monthly update, others need daily or even hourly updates. It depends on the nature of the job. Ironically, lower level managers tend to need more up to the minute data. This is because they control the systems in real time. Upper level managers, by contrast, tend to focus on the big picture over a larger time horizon.

L3 ASSIGNMENT: SALES DATA ANALYSIS

How do you increase sales of your app in the store? In order to answer that question you need to examine your competitive position in the store. Your competitive position is defined by comparisons with other apps selling in the same category. So if you designed a music app, then you should compare with other music apps. There are a number of dimensions along which you can examine your competitive position: market share, unique visitors, conversion rate, personal sales, or cross selling.

Setup

To complete this assignment, you will need two files from your professor. The first is the sales file from the class store. The second is the content drilldown report from Google Analytics. Then create a new blank Excel spreadsheet with the column headings shown in the example. You need to include a row for every app that sold in your category. So if your category is music and there are ten music apps in the store, then you need to have ten rows including your own. Your row should be boldfaced.

Content and Style

Number and answer all of the following questions in the space below your spreadsheet. (Use merge cells and text wrap to make sure that your answers do not exceed the width of your spreadsheet.

• Market share: Of all the sales in your category, what percentage does your app account for? How does that compare with the competition?
• Unique visitors: How many unique visitors came to your page in the store? How does that compare to the competition? What could you do to encourage more visits?
• Conversion rate: Of all the visitors to your page, what percentage actually bought your app? This is called the conversion rate. How does your conversion rate compare with the competition? What could you do to improve your conversion rate?
• Personal sales: The sales records reveal who bought your app. Some of those sales may be the result of you personally promoting the app to others in the class. What percentage of your sales are the result of personal selling? How many people did you try to sell that did not buy your app? What is your closing rate?
• Cross Selling: Of the people that bought your app, what other apps did they buy? What apps cross sell well with your app? Perhaps you could promote your app on those pages and vice versa. To find this answer you need to import the sales table into Microsoft Access and then run both of the queries listed below. It is so worth it; the output is really interesting.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the Excel file electronically

Paper submission: Please print out the Excel file in landscape view using fit to page.

How to Find the Cross Selling Information

Begin by importing the sales data into a blank database in MS Access. Under the External Data tab select Excel and follow the screen prompts. The worksheet should come in as the RawData table or whatever name your professor calls it.

Now you will create two queries to run against the table. The first query, PurchasedTogether, creates a new row for each combination bought by a customer. For example, (WickedCrazyApp, CoolMusicApp), (BogusFlowerApp, IntenseAwesomeApp) and so forth. The logic of this query is to find all records from both tables where the emails match but the apps purchased do not. To create this query go to Create > Query Design and add the RawData table twice in the query design process. The second version of the table is called RawData_1. Drag a connector from one email field to the other to join the Email fields from both tables. (The example shown is simplified, showing only two fields.) Fill out the grid at the bottom to match the example. Run the query by clicking the red exclamation point.

The second query, PurchasedTogetherTotals, counts how many times each combination appears. The logic of this query is to count combinations no matter who bought them. We have further limited the results to those counts greater than 4, but you can change this number as need be. To create this query you must add the PurchasedTogether query in the query design process. In other words you are doing a query of a query! Add the Total row to the grid by clicking the Σ, then fill out the rest of the grid as shown. Run the query and you have your cross selling data!

PurchasedTogether creates a new row for each combination bought by a customer. PurchasedTogetherTotals counts how many times each combination appears no matter who bought it.

Introduction

PowerPoint presentations have become the standard method of presenting information in corporate America. This program is not only used in corporations; however, even professional sports teams and the military use PowerPoint to convey information internally.

Yet, there are still those who claim that PowerPoint is one of the least effective forms of communication for many reasons:

• Most presenters use slides with words only and yet very few words fit on a slide.
• Presenters tend to cram an entire idea—no matter how complex—onto a single slide.
• Most presentations are thrown together with limited preparation, and the goal of most presentations is to summarize and sell ideas rather than to engage the audience in serious discourse.
• Slides are only displayed one at a time. Therefore, the audience has the difficult task of trying to remember what information appeared on previous slides.
• Presenters tend to read their slides.
• Presenters tend to look at the screen when reading the slides thereby avoiding eye contact with the audience.

The result are presentations that are visually bland, intellectually insulting, and easily forgettable.

During your college career, you will use PowerPoint for almost every class in which you or a group has to do a presentation. In this chapter, you will learn how to make those presentations great. Presentations should explain material clearly and concisely while also prompting the audience to take a certain course of action.

A PowerPoint presentation should be a complement to your schematic report. In fact, you should be able to generate the PowerPoint presentation fairly quickly from your schematic report.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Presentation Content

You need to determine the purpose of the presentation and possible circumstances or contexts in which the presentation might be given. This is a time to showcase your ideas and highlight all of the great things about your project. Be concise and powerful. This may be the most crucial deliverable of the project—especially if given to higher-ups who will have only skimmed the actual report.

Think of your presentation as an illustrated version of the executive summary of your schematic report. If you look at it that way, you have already done the work! Each idea from your executive summary should correspond to a slide. Pull ideas out of your executive summary and illustrate them with exhibits from inside the report. Each illustration should be accompanied by a sentence. The sentence can come from the executive summary or from the relevant slide in the report. You may even find that in the process, you end up revising and improving your executive summary.

Not every slide needs to be illustrated, and not every illustration needs to be included. A slide with a single sentence and no illustration may actually have great visual impact by contrast with the rest of the report. Furthermore, some of your illustrations may simply set up foundation knowledge or due diligence and need not make it to the presentation.

To finish up, create slides that bookend your presentation with an agenda up front and a summary at the end. Follow the old adage, tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.

Here are some additional tips:

1. Master the content. 90% of the words that come out of your mouth will not be on the slide. You want the audience to look at you not the slide. Furthermore, if you know your content, you can look at the audience. If necessary, have note cards that you could refer to in an emergency.
2. Try to avoid handing out miniatures of your slides. Slides created using the method above will be virtually meaningless without the presenter. Hand out the schematic report or even just the executive summary instead.

Depicting the process of moving from an executive summary to a PowerPoint presentation. Each sentence in your executive summary can form a slide heading (use your judgement). Then pull the images from your schematic report and enlarge them.

Slide Design – Themes

PowerPoint comes with many different themes to apply to your slides. In general, try to choose either a very light or a very dark colored background. Anything in between will wash out in a bright room.

Themes cannot save a text heavy slide. It is still a boring slide and the speaker may feel obligated to read it to the audience. Many students turn to a dark background theme with the hope that it will convey more professionalism. However, as you can see, it doesn’t solve the problem of a boring slide.

A better option is to move most of the words to your schematic report and instead make your point in a dramatic visual fashion. Visual slides take much longer to create but could differentiate your presentation from every other boring PowerPoint presentation making yours more persuasive.

Slide Design – Principles

You want your presentation to be professional and engaging. To get there you will need the C.R.A.P. principles you have already learned. You will also need stylistic enhancements that come under the heading of Presentation Zen. Finally a little (and we do mean little) multimedia—embedded video or subtle use of animation serves to spice up a presentation.

The C.R.A.P. graphic design principles apply to slide design as well. Contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity help organize information on your slide, focus attention, and create an overall professional look and feel.

Highly visual presentations with very few words are popularized by Garr Reynolds in his book, Presentation Zen. Reynolds advocates restraint, simplicity, and naturalness. The idea is that the slides naturally support your presentation rather than serving as a narrative. You are supposed to know your material.

Presentation Zen slides are characterized by very large illustrations—often full page bleeds—and usually just one sentence of text. This is called the picture superiority effect—basically that pictures are more memorable than words.

Three other Presentation Zen principles are to aim for a high signal to noise ratio, make good use of empty space, and align images using the rule of thirds. These will be covered next.

Presentation Zen in action. Above a text heavy slide cannot be saved no matter which PowerPoint theme is applied. Below the key message of the slide is illustrated by a full page bleed of a picture of the damaged tiles of a previous shuttle flight. We also enlarge and crop the foam picture. Text is set in white on a black fill for contrast. Which slide do you find more interesting, and memorable? Images reprinted from NASA.

High Signal to Noise Ratio: Inform, Don’t Decorate

Every item on your slide should be there for a reason. You are trying to inform the reader and transfer information. You should not aim to decorate your slide with meaningless fluff.

In technical terms you want a strong communication signal and very weak distracting noise in your slide. This is called a high signal to noise ratio. Normally, words, numbers, and graphs are your communications signal—the information you are trying to convey. Pictures can also be part of that signal if they are used judiciously—otherwise they become part of the noise.

Our preference is for the top slide. With no distracting illustrations the audience can focus on the content. However, the illustration in the middle slide is calm enough so as to be acceptable. The bottom slide is just too busy—it has too much noise.

Use of Empty Space: White Space Is Good!

Resist the temptation to fill every available space on your slide with words or images. White space is good! White space is pleasing to the eye and can represent balance and harmony.

However, too much white space might convey that you don’t have very much to say about a particular topic, or that it is not important. Again, it’s all about balance.

The top slide makes good use of white space to let the image breathe. The bottom slide tries to use up all of the white space and in the process horribly distorts the slide. If it looks cartoonish, then don’t do it.

Rule of Thirds

One of the advantages of using a full page bleed is that the picture is often larger than the slide. This gives you the option of positioning and cropping the picture for maximum visual impact.

For many years professional photographers have used the rule of thirds to compose a picture, and you can too. Simply divide the slide horizontally and vertically in thirds using the guides (see technique). The place where the lines meet are called “power points.” No lie. Try to place your subject whether words or images at the power points for maximum visual impact.

This full page bleed was positioned and cropped so that the key illustrations and text would appear on the “power points” of the slide. The power points are determined by the rule of thirds.

Fills for Text Blocks

The problem with a full page bleed is that the text may be unreadable on top of the image depending on the image. One easy solution is to place the text on top of a fill. The fill may be solid (opaque) or semi-transparent if you would like the picture to show through. In either case, the fill allows you to add dimensionality to your document in much the same way that magazines layer text and graphics on their covers.

The easiest way to create this effect is to create a layout on the master slide. Reposition the title so that it completely covers a strip at the top or bottom of the slide. Then right-click and format the text box adding a fill and adjusting the text color as necessary.

To ensure consistency among slides, turn OFF the auto—fit text. Instead simply set the font size to 24 point.

On individual slides you may have to arrange layers so that the text box sits on top rather than below the graphic.

The same slide shown with black background text above and a 60% semi-transparent screen below.

Presentation Zen Resources

Check out the YouTube video below to see Garr himself present, and learn the essence of Presentation Zen.

Watch Garr Reynolds present:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ2vtQCESpk

Garr’s presentation tips on his website:

http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html

Garr’s blog:

www.presentationzen.com.

Nancy Duarte, a colleague of Garr Reynolds, has written an excellent book called Slide:ology, which emphasizes similar design themes. Nancy’s firm, Duarte Design, created the multimedia presentation used by Al Gore in the movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Free Pictures

Free pictures (and some for a fee) may be found at the following links. Please remember to cite sources.

• Everystockphoto search engine (www.everystockphoto.com)
• Flickr Creative Commons (www.flickr.com/creativecommons)
• Image After (www.imageafter.com)
• Morgue File (www.morguefile.com)
• Stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu)

In addition, as a taxpayer, you may use pictures found on most government sites as long as you properly cite them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Used properly PowerPoint can be an effective means of communication. However, most of the time it is used improperly, thereby creating extreme boredom.
• Think of your presentation as an illustrated version of your executive summary. By definition, your executive summary contains the key facts, issues, and conclusions of your report.
• Bookend your presentation with an agenda and a summary with conclusions.
• A PowerPoint theme will not save your presentation if the content is dull.
• C.R.A.P., Presentation Zen, and a little animation will serve to liven up your presentation and give it a professional look.
• Presentation Zen is characterized by many large illustrations, relatively little text, high signal to noise ratios, and effective use of white space.
• The rule of thirds helps to position text and images on a slide.
• You may need to modify your slide master to create an effective Presentation Zen design.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. In what way do the Presentation Zen concepts help focus attention and preserve only the essential elements? Explain.

L3 ASSIGNMENT: PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION DEVELOPMENT

Develop professional presentation skills that you can use on the job as well as in your other classes.

Setup

Create a new PowerPoint presentation that complements your schematic report.

Content and Style

• Create an organized, clear, and polished presentation.
• Follow all C.R.A.P. and Presentation Zen principles.
• Create a title slide with your name and the date.
• Create an agenda slide at the beginning and a summary and conclusions slide at the end.
• The body of the presentation should consist of Presentation Zen slides—pictures with very few words.
• Use the Office theme (plain white background).
• Use full page bleeds for the visuals whenever possible.
• Use a contrasting fill or semi transparent screen for text boxes.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the document electronically.

Paper submission: Print handouts with two slides per page.

Sample student presentation made from an executive summary. Sentences from the executive summary form the slide headings. Note the graphics are the same as from the schematic report—only enlarged.

Introduction

There are at least two situations in which you will need to provide a cover letter and resume. One is when applying for a job. However, when you apply for a business loan you may also be asked for a resume. After all the bank wants to gauge whether or not you have the experience and talent to make the business a success.

Your job is to summarize, highlight, and organize your experiences and skills so that it is easy for an employer or loan officer to see what you have to offer. There are guidelines available to help you format your resume and cover letter in an organized and effective manner. Even the most impressive professional experiences can come across poorly if they are displayed on an unorganized resume.

Most of this chapter is written from the perspective of a job search. We have done this so that you will be able to reference the chapter upon graduation to look for a job. However, the same lessons are equally useful in applying for a loan for the purposes of our iPhone assignment.

Initially, employers spend an average of less than one minute looking over a resume, so you need to sell yourself well by having a resume that stands apart from the rest. A resume is your first impression to a potential employer. During a job search, it is the most important tool you can use to get your foot in the door for an interview with a desired employer.

This chapter will provide valuable guidelines to help you create a well-designed and organized resume and cover letter.

Where Are We in the Life Cycle?

Many information systems projects are conceived of in a life cycle that progresses in stages from analysis to implementation. The diagram below shows the stages that we touch in the current chapter:

Creating a Cover Letter

When sending a resume to an employer, it is often appropriate to include a cover letter. The purpose of a cover letter is to introduce yourself, explain your reason for contacting the employer, and to sell yourself as a desirable candidate for employment.

Writing and Printing a Cover Letter

Cover letters should be personalized and should be prepared individually with each job application. They should be addressed to a specific person, not just a company or department. You can find employee addresses in directories on the company website or through a personal inquiry. CareerSearch®, is a web-based employer research system, and the VAULT  Online Career Library are two other ways to research companies and find contact information.

Cover letters should be no more than one page long and should be produced on the same paper as your resume and reference sheet. Also, be sure to double check grammar and spelling to avoid unprofessional errors, and use an organized and neat letter format.

Creating a Resume

A resume is an employer’s first impression of a potential employee. Before you start creating a resume, you will need to gather information concerning your skills and experiences and decide on a career goal.

Activities/Associations

This section should include your extracurricular activities and interests. List any professional organizations, student organizations, athletic teams, or other clubs to which you belong. You may also include any honors or awards you have received or any professional workshops you have attended.

Interviewing Guidelines

Most people are familiar with traditional interviews and can anticipate what type of questions they will be asked in the interview process. Many companies are now using behavioral interview questions in order to discover an applicant’s skills and capabilities.

Techniques

The following techniques, found in the Word section of the software reference, may be useful in completing the assignments for this chapter: Increase/Decrease Indent • Line spacing • Margins • Ruler • Tab-left • Tab-right • Text-align • Text-bullet • Text-format

L1 ASSIGNMENT: COVER LETTER DESIGN

This exercise also helps you become more familiar with Word and how to format professional documents.

At some point you will apply for a job. You will have to prepare a resume (the L2 exercise). However, for the personal touch often a cover letter is written to accompany the resume.

Setup

Download the file Cover Letter Before.doc from the class web site and save it to your folder. Start MS Word and open the file. Format the given cover letter so that it looks like the “After” example. Use the techniques on the following pages.

Content and Style

Recreate the After example so that your format and alignment is similar to the example.

• Heading and spacing should be the same as the “After” cover letter.
• Fill in any missing elements.
• Add the greeting to the letter.
• Add your name at the bottom and use a script font for your “signature.” In real life you would print out and sign the letter.
• Be sure to use the current date to begin your letter.

Deliverables

Electronic Submission: Submit the “After” cover letter version electronically.

Paper submission: Print the “After”document directly out of Word.

L2 ASSIGNMENT: RESUME DESIGN

This exercise helps make sure that your resume goes in the “good” pile.

Your resume is the number form of communication that you have to apply for a job. It has to be perfect to help present yourself well. Most resumes are viewed for less than a minute by recruiters.

Setup

Download the file Resume Before.doc and save it to your folder. Start MS Word and open the file. Format the given resume so that it looks like the “After” example. Use the techniques on the following pages.

Content and Style

Recreate the “After” example making sure that your alignment and spacing is similar to the example. Each heading level and text should be formatted CONSISTENTLY.

• Add your name and your email address at the top of the page in place of Joe Bobcat’s.
• To start: Set the margins to narrow. Then highlight the entire document (Ctrl + A) and place Left Tab Stops at 3/8″, 4/8″, and 5/8″ and a Right Tab stop at 7.5″. Each time you press the Tab key, the content will move to the next Tab stop.

• Follow these guidelines for fonts.

  • Name: Choose a sans-serif font and make it very large.
  • Body text: Choose a serif font.
  • Category headings: Same sans-serif font as your name, 2 points larger than body text size, bold.
  • School/company name: Same sans-serif font as your name, body text size.
  • Position: Same sans-serif font, body text size, italicized.
  • Body Text: 10 pt or larger text size, Serif font.
• Make sure there is one blank line between categories and after each employer section.
• Make sure your e-mail address does not become hyperlinked (blue and underlined). If it does become hyperlinked, right click on your e-mail address and select Delete Hyperlink.

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the “After” resume version electronically. It should be only one page.

Paper submission: Create a printout of your “After” resume. It should be only one page.

L3 ASSIGNMENT: RESUME, COVER LETTER, AND INTERVIEW

Customize a cover letter, resume, and answer interview questions to prepare for life outside of college.

When you’re out looking for a job, you’ll need a resume (maybe several versions) and likely an individual cover letter for each position for which you apply. It is important that you always keep an updated version of your resume, constantly adding to it each time you get a new job, master a new skill, or anything else that could have an impact on your future career. You will also answer sample behavioral based interview questions in this assignment.

Setup

Create your resume and cover letter in two separate Word documents.

Content and Style

Create a resume and cover letter tailored to your ideal job or internship and answer behavior-based interview questions. You should have your contact information, school details, and work experience on your resume. The other categories that you choose to include are based on your experiences and career goals. You will be graded on both your content and formatting. An additional Word document should be submitted with answers to two behavioral-based questions, which will be graded on your clear and concise use of the PAR method.

• The most important characteristic of your documents is professionalism. Spelling and grammar must be perfect, so make sure you proofread, and have someone else proofread for you.
• Make sure to follow the formatting guidelines from the L1 and L2, although your content will obviously vary from the examples.
• Your resume does not have to be in the same exact layout as the L2, but it should follow all of the guidelines in this chapter.
• You can add and remove categories as your resume content demands.
• You must create your own content for the cover letter. DO NOT COPY THE EXAMPLE IN THE L1. Create your own content in both the resume and cover letter.
• If you only have one address, center align it on the resume
• The cover letter should be addressed to a person. If you don’t know one, make up a name.
• Make sure your e-mail address does not become hyperlinked (blue and underlined). If it does become hyperlinked right click on your e-mail address and select Delete Hyperlink.

• Please answer any two of the following questions in a separate Word document. Follow the PAR method, and be sure to use your own experiences in your answers.

  • Tell me about a skill or technique you learned in school and how you have put that to use in real life.
  • How did you make the decision to attend your college or university?
  • Tell me about a time when a project was changed after you had already done a significant amount of work. How did you react?
  • From a student’s perspective, what is your definition of good performance? What do you do to perform up to that standard?
  • Describe a time you made a risky decision. What happened?

Deliverables

Electronic submission: Submit the resume, cover letter (“signed”), and interview answer documents –totaling three separate documents, electronically.

Paper submission: Create a printout of your resume, cover letter, and interview answer document, and sign your cover letter with black or blue ink.