| Purpose:
The technology showroom was an environment created to give potential
Unisys customers a preview into the kinds of technolgies/solutions
available. The system the department wanted was to provide two main
functions: (a) Provide an authoring environment where a guide could choose his/her selection of videos and store them as a play list. They could maintain a list of categories and vidoes under those categories customized according to say the airline, banking or the publishing industry. (b) Have an extremely easy to navigate graphical interface for use with CD-ROM product catalogs Timeframe: 6 months Requirements: - Must be web based & accessible via corporate network - Produce quick prototypes since the User interface was one of the most important aspects of the system - The guides must be able to use system without any training - The routine tasks such as adding new vidoes/ categories must be easy & intuitive - A playlist that could be played in Windows Media Player should be generated when the user wants to rehearse their selection of videos My Role: - Collect requirements from sales guides interviews & emails - Have weekly meetings with the manager & supervisor on various issues - Develop prototypes and conduct testing before making final changes - Implement system in a iterative manner - each new version had incremental changes - Work with my team members in designing the code & agreeing on the various practices/conventions - Prepeare both system and user documentation Implementation: Major tasks were implemented as server side scripts using a combination of ASP & JavaScript. Functions such as maintening categories, videos were coded in a separate page so as to facilitate reuse. Used FileSystemObject to read files from the local directories and add the files into the database when the user added them. A video playlist using XML based tags were generated programmatically from the user selection so when the user wants to rehearse he /she could get a preview of what vidoes they chose and the time duration for the entire session. The second part - the CD-ROM catalog was completely created in Macromedia Flash (please view screenshots of the catalog below). It include some custom ActiveScript (similar to JavaScript) to link the animation with vidoes & external websites. |
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Welcome
Screen showing available categories Technology
Showroom Web Based Authoring Environment
Authoring Environment - videos under category customized for each user 
Screen for choosing videos from File System to add to a user's playlist 
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