Design
Implementation
We decided to implement our website using HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the frontend, the Flask web development framework for the backend, and SQLite for the database. Flask is written in Python, and while it is similar in principle to Django, it is much more lightweight, and therefore is easier to set up and use. It has a templating system for web pages that reduces the amount of code duplication.
In our model (the database), we used three tables to represent the data: budget, projects, and student requests. They contained the following columns:
Projects | Budget | Requests |
|---|---|---|
Start date | Start Date | Start Date |
Completion Date |
|
|
Status | Status |
|
Floor Number | Floor Number | Floor Number |
Cost | Cost |
|
Description | Description | Description |
These database tables were used to populate the tables on the site. When a user made created a new project, a new entry was created in the database via a SQL query. Likewise, if a user edited an already existent project, that project's entry in the database was updated via SQL. The 'budget' page used the information in the database to generate the graphic displayed on the left side of the page, as well as its tooltips. Our intention was to completely integrate the backend of each view with every other view. For example, creating, deleting or modifying a project should update its corresponding entry in the budgets table. We were not able to implement that feature in time, so we used dummy information to generate the budget view.
Evaluation
Our user population for this project was a building manager, more specifically a house manager. Finding our users was simple and straight forward because there are twelve undergraduate dorms and 7 graduate residences each with their own housemaster. We attempted to set up appointments with the house managers and was only able to secure testing opportunities with two, one managing an undergraduate dorm and one managing a graduate residence. Our third user was a housemaster of an undergraduate dorm. Even though the housemaster is not the house manager, they are familiar with the duties of a house manager and sometimes share similar responsibilities, such as managing a budget, projects, and receiving student ideas and concerns.
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