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INFO 01 Revision:

1. Health & Safety in relation to the use of ICT systems

Risk Assessment:
Identify the hazard.
Identify the risk of the hazard e.g. eyestrain.
Put safety precautions in place to reduce the risk e.g. breaks.
Give training to the employees make them aware of the risks.
Appraise the employees an the situation to so if anything got worse or
improved.
Encourage the employees to report any health and safety problems.
Workstation design:
Adjustable chair with 5 wheels and a strong back support adjustable in
height.
Monitor should tilt and swivel.
Keyboard adjustable in height.
Enough space for paper documents and other equipment.
Document holder to make reading easier and more comfortable.
Footrest must be provided if needed.
Wrist rest may relieve strain on the wrists.
Ergonomic mouse and keyboard.
Illnesses that might occur:
Back pain and spinal damage (neck problems): Sitting in the same
position for a long time they might even sit in wrong posture.
Repetitive strain injury (RSI): Repetitive movement typing or clicking the
mouse that can cause pain and damage the joints in some case
permanently.
Eye strain and headaches: Focusing on the screen for long periods, tilt and
swivel the screen to reduce glare and reflections, take hourly brakes or do
something different, eye tests have to be paid by employee, and classes if
they are needed for the use with the computer.
Deep Vein thrombosis: Sitting still for a long time develops blood clots
prevent by taking breaks and moving around.
H&S with software:
Font size, color to make text clearly visible.
Logical menu layout to reduce scrolling around icons close together.
Keyboard shortcuts macros to make a series of actions with only one
click.
Software should accept voice command and touchscreen OCR and
barcode readers.
Help option to reduce stress for unskilled users.
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2. Analysis and design:

Identify the problem: Client and end-user
Interview: time, cost, but quality because of two-way comm.
Questionnaire: Analyze result, lower costs, ask many people, question not
understood.
Existing paper work: what are the out and inputs, lots of information
might be secret not visible.
Observation: skill, amount of data, stress, waiting times, different days
different performance, cost and time.
Writing requirements specification:
Data capture: where is it from, type of data, format, volume, how often.
Function what has to be done: produce invoice
Function how to: calculations, what does the user have to do.
Interface: colors, menu structure, input and output devices, skill, special
need.
Output: paper, electronically, who will use them.
Storage: What, how long, structure, filenames, cloud storage, volume
important, security, backups.
Security: Confidential data, follow data protection act (customers), access
of user can they use all parts of the system.
Approve requirements with the client.



Design the solution:

Data capture forms: OCR voice recognition, computer forms, paper forms.
Validation: presence check, range check, format check, length check, look
up, check digit.
Interface: colors requirements.
Processes; calculations, macros, queries.
Design the output: e.g. printout needs address and company logo.
Approve design with the client.
Testing
Training
Changeover technique.
Input Processing Output
Picture from camera Crop and edit Usable photograph
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3. Input:
Types:
Text
Still and moving images
Numbers
Sound
Touch
Devices:
Keyboard.
Mouse.
Touch sensitive device.
Concept keyboards for spicily specific for a software.
PDAs touch with a stylus (pen).
Graphic with tablets drawing with stylus (pen).
Speech recognition.
Automated devices:
Card readers: magnetic strip card, chip and pin cards.
Radio frequency ID (RFID): radio waves unique serial number,
underground London
Scanners: scan paper documents, bar code scanners.
Optical mark recognition (OMR): senses the position of marks used for
multiple-choice exams.
Optical character recognition (OCR): uses scanner and software to turn
paper-based text into computer characters.
Electronic point of sale (EPOS): uses bar odes to enter product numbers
at shop tills that are linked to stock databases.
Magnetic ink character recognition (MICR): uses magnetic ink print can
be used for cheques.
Sound input: sound has to be sampled digital equivalent of the waveform
is produced. Sample rate high rate better quality.
Video input: Webcams, digital cameras.
Special input devices: large track ball (mouse), foot mouse.
Games controller: wii via Bluetooth
Choosing an input device:
Type of data
Volume of data
User preference
Source of data
Budget available
Where is it used
Software and hardware available.
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4. Output:
Devices:
Screens and monitors:
CRT monitor: cathode ray tubes that fire electrons at a screen to make the
pixels that means the screen is really big but high quality.
TFT monitor: thin film transistor: really flat, LCD monitor, less quality.
Digital projectors
Interactive white boards
Plasma screens: tiny bulbs make up the pixels.
Mobile phone screens: LCD
PDAs
Printers:
Laser printers: low color quality, high speed, use three colors and black,
good for text and diagrams, cheap if a lot is printed, printer is expensive.
Inkjet printers: home use, cheaper, more expensive to run cost per page
printed, slower than laser printers, high resolution for photos.
Multi-function printer: fax, scanner, often inkjet.
Dot-matrix printer: several copies can be printed at once as it prints on
multipart stationary, used in industry, high volume low quality.
Plotters: uses pens to draw on paper which move across, detailed shapes,
only lines and shades, large technical drawings. Also used to cut shapes.
Speakers:
Earphones and headphones.
Choosing an output device:
Display:
What is viewed?
Where is it viewed?
Who is viewing it? (Eyesight)
By how many people is it viewed?
Internet pages should adjust them self to different out put devices.
Printers:
What is printed?
How much is printed?
What media?
Who is using the printer?
Quality
Cost
Time
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5. Storage:
Why:
Operating system required for the computer to function.
Application software needs to be stored on the computer.
Files so they can be used again.
Data may need to be transferred from one device to another.
Back ups copies must be taken if the data is crucial to a business and
always needed in the case it is lost.

1 MB = 1024 KB KB-MB-GB-TB

Types of storage:

Internal
ROM: memory cannot be changed used to load the BIOS basic input
output system to make a computer work
RAM: main memory where al locations can be read an written to equally
quickly.
Backing Storage: stores data and program files within a computer.
External:
Magnetic storage:
Hard disks: high volume low price, robust and reliable. External ones can
be used to transfer high volumes of data. RAID exists of many hard rives
that mirror them self so hot swapping is possible if one hard rive fails no
data is lost.
Floppy disk: only 1.44 MB of data not used as new computers cant read
the anymore.
Tape: really cheap slow transfer.
Optical storage:
CD ROM compact disks: 650 MB read only used for music:
DVD ROM digital video discs: 4,7 GB, read only, software and movies.
CD-R and DVD-R: write on the once, backing up,
CD-RW and DVD-R: write and overwrite as often as needed.
Flash memory: high volume small quick data transfer cheap can get lost quickly.
Cloud storage: internet access needed accesable from different location security
issues.
Choosing a device: Volume, reason, rewritten or read only, speed of recovery and
transfer, physical size of device, budget available.

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6. Software:
System software:
Managing memory.
Carrying out processes and tasks management.
Controlling storage of data
Communicating between input and output devices.
Error messages.
System security user and file permission.
Graphical user interface GUI.
Application software:
Text: all the fucking word options, shared projects and brochures and
other stuff.
Database: data types, validation, grouping, queries (search criteria), forms
reports and macros.
Numbers: Spreadsheets maths, finance, time and date, look up, statistics,
percentages.
Pictures: Photoshop.
Video editing software.
Sound editing, music composition,
Presentation software: PowerPoint use text, video, sound and effects.
Web authoring software (make websites): HTML ( hypertext markup
language) the language webpages are written.
Email software: attachments, photos, files.
Web browser.: home page, add-ons, extensions, RSS feeds gives you a
notification if a website updated something e.g. new news article.
Choosing application software:
Skill
Price
Task
Operating system







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7. Implementation and testing:
Planning for implementation:
How long will a task take
In what orders can the tasks ne done.
Gantt chart: a time-based grid that shows tasks and resources to
accomplish a job.
Implementing your solution:
Follow your time plan
Follow your design plan
Document what you do
Test planning:
Test strategy: what testing is needed will you carry out.
Test data: normal, boundary, erroneous.
Test plan should prove: validity of data input, accuracy of output,
presentation of output, meet the client requirements, solution is usable.
User testing, volume testing, testing in the real environment.















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8. Evaluation:
In this section we look at the assessment of the effectiveness of the solution in
meeting the clients requirements and understand what makes an ICT solution
effective.
You should ask yourselves the following questions:
Does the solution do what it is supposed to do?
Does the solution do it in the way it is supposed to do it?
Is the solution an effective one?
If it is not, what is wrong with the solution and what would make the solution
an effective one?
Evaluation is very important as it looks back at the work that has been produced
and reviews the progress in meeting the requirements set by the client. In order
to produce a good evaluation you need to understand what has been done and
any mistakes you have made must be corrected.
How to produce a good evaluation
Evaluations are always badly written as most students believe that they are
writing about what they DID and not whether they did what they were supposed
to do. Comments like IfI had more time or I was doing well until the printer
broke down should now be a thing of the past as there is no formal project at AS
level, although they still could appear at A2 level. You are not writing about what
you learnt by doing the task, how you used the packages, a lack of time or how
much help you were given.
So what do you write about?
Go back to the original analysis and your performance indicators. These are your
targets to ensure that you did the work correctly. If I was producing an
evaluation I would take these and paste them into the evaluation and then
comment on them individually. Having done this you can now discuss how
successful you were in meeting each of these targets. Use evidence from your
project to support this write up, this could include user testing or even your own
testing. You have to give two sides to the evaluation so you need to write about
the limitations in the work, what went wrong, and what couldnt be solved, and
then link this to any improvements that you could make if you were to do this
project again.