ASSIGNMENT 2 BRIEF

Qualification BTEC Level 5 HND Diploma in Computing

Unit number UNIT 13: Computing Research Project

Assignment title Doing reflection on your project

Academic Year 2020 - 2021

Unit Tutor Ho Hai Van

Issue date 10 September 2021 Submission date 21 March 2021

IV name and date

Submission Format:
Format: The submission is in the form of 1 document
You must use font Calibri size 12, set number of the pages and use multiple line spacing at
1.3. Margins must be: left: 1.25 cm; right: 1 cm; top: 1 cm and bottom: 1 cm. The reference
follows Harvard referencing system.
Submission Students are compulsory to submit the assignment in due date and in a way requested by
the Tutors. The form of submission will be a soft copy posted on
http://cms.greenwich.edu.vn/
Note: The Assignment must be your own work, and not copied by or from another student or from
books etc. If you use ideas, quotes or data (such as diagrams) from books, journals or other sources, you
must reference your sources, using the Harvard style. Make sure that you know how to reference
properly, and that understand the guidelines on plagiarism. If you do not, you definitely get failed

Unit Learning Outcomes:

LO4 Reflect on the application of research methodologies and concepts

Assignment Brief and Guidance:

Scenario
As you have completed your research project now it is time to look back and learn some lessons from
your work. You need to prepare a report to describe your personal development. Remember to write
your own experience, thoughts and it is specific to YOU NOT explaining the general concepts.
Here are some suggestions which you can put in the report:

 Project’s proposal, the research process(sequential example) how it helped you completed your
 research
 Reflection on the merits, limitations and potential pitfalls of the chosen methods: examples
qualitative research, secondary research; the relationship between the two in your research
 The roles of Literature review in your project
 How did you create project plan and how often you did you update it. Why you need you need to
update the plan
 How often did you meet the tutor and how the tutor helped you to create more effective
research.
 How did you choose participations(sample types, sizes) and the importance of it?
 How did you present your research result?
 Consider other research approach and improvements in future research
 …..

Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria

Pass Merit Distinction

LO4 Reflect on the application of research methodologies and

concepts
D3 Demonstrate reflection and
P6 Reflect on the effectiveness of M4 Provide critical reflection and engagement in the resource
research methods applied for insight that results in process
meeting objectives of the recommended leading to recommended
computing research project. Actions for improvements and actions
future research considerations. for future improvement.
P7 Consider alternative research
methodologies and lessons learnt
in view of the outcomes.
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LO4 Reflect on the application of research
methodologies and concepts
P6 Reflect on the effectiveness of research methods applied for

meeting objectives of the computing research project.

1. Describe the research objectives of projects.

The research’ purpose: Real estate transaction system development and provide a direction for digital
transformation in the real estate industry. In order to change the way to approach and transact real
estate from traditional transactions. Instead of having to go to the place to make transactions, this
change helps buyers or sellers to make transactions online. without having to spend a lot of time
commuting.By using research methods (primary research and secondary research) to collect and
analyze data for research.

• After conducting the research, the team came up with the basic objectives of the project
including:

Improve service: Service innovation is one of the cornerstones of digital transformation. Clients need
to enjoy a better service and their real estate transactions must be responded to faster and more fully.
This will have a positive effect on sales and profits.
To enhance internal collaboration: The company internally uses the system to improve document
management processes (real estate and clients).
To optimize processes: Every manual transaction works through a series of repetitive processes. These
can often be related to sourcing, marketing or accounting. Digital transformation allows capabilities to
be refined to improve processes.
Safe for customers: Real estate scams are a big concern for today's clients, and rightfully so. Therefore,
securing paper information and customer data becomes paramount because almost anything can be
hacked.
After stating the purpose and objectives of the project, we formulated 4 research questions to
conduct the research. Include the following questions:
-How do clients connect with real estate companies?
-How do buyers view the properties the company has?

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-How do sellers sell their real estate?
-How will real estate documents be managed?

2. State the research methods that you applied in your projects.

The application of research methods brings many positives to data collection, improving user
experience based on collecting the positives and negatives of the available platforms. Currently, there
are many research methods that can be applied to the project, but after researching and analyzing the
group decided to use two methods: Secondary research and primary research.

• Primary research

To research the real estate market comprehensively we also use primary research. For the project to
be the most effective primary research, we used two main methods: interview and survey.
-Quantitative - Interview: We choose the interview approach to conduct real estate research because
it allows us to get the most out of the critical parts that our project requires, and it also allows us to
acquire information. Collect additional user feedback on the real estate market, giving our project a
chance to break through in terms of demands and interests.For example , below are 2 images with
questions and answers from one of our interviewees about the functions or technology available in
the online real estate platform . But this functional and technology question yields extremely useful
information about what functions to focus on and what to omit, along with technologies to focus on.

-Qualitative Survey: The real estate market survey is an essential component of the project research
process because it allows us to recognize the ups and downs of the real estate market, as well as
identify difficulties in the real estate sector, from which we may derive demand and opportunities in
the real estate sector.For example, the survey question below with the chart shows that users are also
very interested in the existing functions of the online real estate platform. It shows that the use of
online real estate trading applications is being focused, so the digital transformation of real estate is a
trend that the real estate industry is aiming for.

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 Figure 1 Example

• Secondary research

Using data available on the internet about real estate, especially real estate demand and property
prices of each area. Research government real estate and brokerage laws and regulations. Based on
available information sources of previously published companies to analyze ongoing projects.
The collection of data for the purpose of collecting information about real estate available on the
internet. The collected information is used to make price judgments about the real estate market,
understand the needs of real estate buyers and sellers and the potential of real estate in the future.
The end of this secondary research is to support an effective and successful research project.
First,based on real estate websites, real estate groups on social media, government real estate
transaction laws and real estate articles. We have collected a lot of information about the laws and
methods of real estate transactions. The evidence is that our team has drawn the conclusion that real
estate is now subject to many current law management (notary, contract, authorization .....) which is
difficult for current technology. solvable. Therefore, implementing digital transformation of real estate
immediately without considering the specificities and constraints of the industry will cause procedural
and possibly legal obstacles.
The second, we collect information from the most visited and trusted websites: batdongsan.com.vn,
cafeland.vn, nhadat24h.net.We will collect data for the last 3 years so that websites can be easily
analyzed and compared.For batdongsan.com.vn, the collected data shows that women access the
website 15% less than men. For the age group from 25 to 34, the demand for research, sale and rental
accounted for 50.3%. Coming to Chotot.com , the data collected shows that most of the visitors to the
website are men, accounting for 64.18%. The age of accessing the website is mostly from 25-34,
accounting for more than 50% of the traffic. For Alonhatdat.com.vn, the data also tells you that the
male gender visits the website more than the female gender when accounting for 55. .7% while
female only accounted for 44.21%. For the age group from 25 to 34 is the age group that visits the

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most when earning more than 50% of the traffic.
The third, we collect data about VR technology and 360-degree photos is a very famous technology
and is being applied a lot on real estate platforms. Data collected from 5 online real estate platforms:
HooZing, Luxstay, Chotot, Agoda, Cenhome, up to 3/5 platforms apply VR technology and 360-degree
photos accounted for 60%. We already know the benefits of these technologies in the online real
estate industry such as cost-effective architectural visualization, no geographical restrictions, time
saving and more convenient .
Finally, we rely on articles, newsletters and media to study the factors that can affect the digital
transformation of real estate today. The first is due to the Covid-19 epidemic- 19 helps people have
more time to access technology, especially those who want to buy and sell real estate, will use online
real estate platforms, showing the potential in digital transformation of real estate. produce . Next is
the issue of people and education. Because Vietnam is a developing country, access to technology is
new and it takes time to adapt to technology. It also makes the digital transformation of real estate
slow and difficult.

3. Explain whether the research methods have met the project objectives

or not.

To be able to have the most overview of the effectiveness that research methods bring to the project's
objectives in research. In this section, I will explain the research methods that met the project's
objectives and explain why some of the research methods applied did not meet the project's
objectives.

• Primary research

After applying primary research, we have come up with 4 essential elements in a real estate
transaction system.
The first element is to improve the user interface and system speed to attract new users and retain
the old ones. As the survey results below show that the majority of users want an easy-to-use and
easy-to-use interface, accounting for 62.7% of survey participants. On the other hand, 36.7% of survey
respondents rated the difficult-to-use interface of the platforms they used. Based on the above two
results, it shows the improvement of the user interface and the processing speed of the system. The
system will retain old users and attract new users to use the system.

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 Figure 2 Example

Figure 3 Example

The second factor is the application of VR technology and 360 images that increase the user
experience. According to the survey results, the majority of participants support this technology,
including: VR has 27/52 participants (accounting for 51.9%) and 3D & 360 images have 37/ 52
participants chose (accounting for 71.2%). It shows that most of the participants are quite interested
in this technology, so integrating this technology into the system to enhance the user experience.

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 Figure 4 Example

The third factor that can be said to be the most important factor for real estate is transparency and
verification of real estate. The survey results show that 56% of the participants are interested in the
transparency of real estate and up to 40% of the survey participants are interested in censoring real
estate information. Transparency and real estate censorship are essential for users to confidently
transact real estate on the system and attract new users.

Figure 5 Example

The fourth element is the filtering function of the system to increase the user's search experience.
Through the results of the survey, all users participated in voting and commenting on the system's
filtering function. Along with that, the interview results also show that many people complain about
the filtering function of the previous systems. This shows that having a good filtering function
improves user experience and their satisfaction.

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 Figure 6 Example

• Secondary research

In this section, we will talk about what secondary research has achieved after applying it to the
project. After applying secondary research we have come up with two factor that may affect Real
estate transactions include two factor :
The first factor that we can see is the epidemic. The complicated Covid-19 epidemic has affected the
real estate industry, especially manual and traditional transaction methods. According to data
collected from websites dangcongsan.vn, real estate sales are stagnating, transactions down -70%
QoQ and -94% YoY. It shows that digital transformation in the real estate industry is the most effective
method to help the real estate industry overcome this difficulty.
The second factor affecting the real estate market is blockchain technology. Through blockchain
technology, real estate transactions can be automated, accelerated, and easier to track and accessible.
The application of this technology can help reduce the real estate transaction process as well as
increase the security of the real estate transaction process. Another technology that is also having a
great influence on the real estate industry is VR 360 technology. Through VR 360 technology, users can
have an overview of the real estate they are interested in without having to waste time. From this
research, we have decided to apply these two technologies in our online real estate transaction
system.
In addition, after conducting secondary research, we also found 3 general states of the real estate
market.
The first state is that the current real estate trading activity is no longer exciting, largely due to social
distancing measures to prevent the Covid-19 epidemic. Evidence from the website dangcongsan.vn
shows that according to statistics, in the third quarter of 2021, the primary supply of about 3,000
units, the lowest level in the past five years, decreased by -18% QoQ and -70% QoQ year and the
transaction volume and absorption rate of the third quarter of 2021 were at the lowest level in the
past 5 years.
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The second state is that house prices continue to rise. Despite the stressful epidemic situation,
housing prices have not shown any signs of cooling down. Evidence from the website baochinhphu.vn
shows that in two major Vietnamese cities, the asking price of apartments in Ho Chi Minh City in
August tended to be flat compared to July, but increased by nearly 9% over the same period in 2020.
Hanoi continued to record an increase of 8% in apartment selling prices over the same period.
The third status is that mortgages are getting easier. The correct implementation of social distancing
causes the economy to reduce losses in particular and businesses in general. Therefore, the "slight
easing" of credit standards is essential to be able to recover the economy. Particularly in the field of
real estate business and a number of other fields such as investment and trading in securities, finance,
insurance ... will still be restricted from lending. Specifically, loan conditions and terms will also be
tightened for the real estate business and investment lending sector. Thanks to that, the purchase and
sale of assets becomes easier. should be easier.

4. The reason the project has yet to meet expectations

Overall, the results of our project have achieved the research objectives. However, the results of this
study are still not really accurate for a number of reasons that I will mention below. Therefore, I
evaluate the results of this project only about 80%.
The first reason is due to the Covid-19 epidemic, we cannot observe the process of performing a real
estate transaction. On the other hand, the implementation of other studies also becomes difficult,
with specific observational methods in primary research.
The second reason is that the results have a high error rate . The survey results show that the majority
of participants have no experience in real estate trading, accounting for 42.3%.

Figure 7 Example

The third reason is that there are some questions that have not been answered by 100% of the
participants. As you can see in the image below, this question has only 42/52 answers. This problem
makes the data analysis possible to be biased and inaccurate making it harder to achieve the project
goal. We can solve this problem by selecting the answer option, but this causes other problems such
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as participants randomly choosing an answer or they get upset and leave the survey.

Figure 8 Example

The fourth reason is the indiscriminate answer to the questions. It is inevitable that the participants
answer the questions indiscriminately in the survey. There are usually two reasons for participants to
indiscriminately respond to their answers. The first reason is that they don't really understand the
question. The second reason they felt answering the questions was quite annoying, so they didn't read
the question and answer indiscriminately.
The fifth reason is that the interview questions do not really bring in-depth results. More open-ended
questions are needed in data collection by interview. We use a lot of Yes/No questions in our
interviews. This makes the data we obtain limited.

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 Figure 9 Example

In summary, the results we obtained from this project also give us some insight into the digital
transformation in the real estate industry today. In the future, we will conduct another study on this
topic to have a better view of digital transformation in the real estate industry.

P7 Consider alternative research methodologies and lessons

learned in view of the outcomes.

While doing research on the project has brought me many experiences, especially experiences and
lessons for future research. In this section I will highlight the mistakes and lessons of digital
transformation in the real estate industry. Based on the mistakes and lessons learned I will suggest
things to note , improve or replace for our project .

1. Mistakes during our research process?

The first mistake: do not use “Require” option in Google Form

Most surveys today use the available survey creation platform Google Form and we are no exception.
But one mistake we made was not using the "Require" option, causing many participants to skip many
questions. Using the "Require" option makes it mandatory for participants to answer fully in order to
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end the survey, however we have omitted the use of the "Require" option, which results in loss of
many responses.

Figure 10 Example

In the statistics table, there are 52 responses, which means 52 survey participants, but there are some
incomplete 52 answers.

Figure 11 Example

The second mistake: use a lot of Yes/No questions in the interview

Interviews are indispensable for gathering information directly from participants. Asking extensive and
in-depth questions can yield more information. But we made the mistake of asking the questions.
Most of the questions asked were Yes/No questions making it difficult to gather information because
Yes/No questions yielded only a tiny bit of information. From the example illustrated below, it can be
seen that there are many questions that receive a Yes or No answer with no further information
collected.

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 Figure 12 Example

The third mistake: choosing the wrong interviewer

The interview took place with some open-ended questions and some questions about technology. But
most of our participants are people with little or no technology knowledge. The example below shows
that the selection of subjects to survey is very important for information collection.

Figure 13 Example

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2. Lessons from our research topic?

The first lesson is about scheduling time to do research

During the research process, I can say that the delaying factor for the group's research activities was
due to the poor time arrangement. Therefore, it is necessary to draw lessons for arranging time. Good
time arrangement can improve and speed up the research performance of yourself in particular and
the group in general. Not only improve the speed of research, but also improve the quality of your
own research. The group and themselves. The reasonable arrangement of time also helps to prevent
the assigned tasks from being pressed, minimizing errors in the research process.

Figure 14 Scheduling time

The second lesson is to follow the research procedure given

During the research process, I often went against the research procedure set out by the group leader,
causing a lot of errors in the research process. Adhering to the research process helps to carry out the
research more smoothly and avoid unnecessary errors. After I learned the lesson about complying
with the research process, my research performance improved without unnecessary errors.

Figure 15 Research Process

The third lesson is a lesson about teamwork

The implementation of a project is not only an individual but needs a team to carry out the research
given. In teamwork, there are many factors that determine the success of the group, but the most
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important factor is communication and help between members. Teamwork also needs to be respectful
of opinions among members to be able to find a common voice and reach the ultimate goal of
completing the initially proposed research.

Figure 16 Teamwork

3. Improvements for our future research.

To improve research for the future, we need to improve the quality of research methods, so I will
present some factors that need to be improved for future research projects.
Improve the quality of interviewer training:In order to improve the quality of the interviewers, we
need to practice more skills such as: Communication, Critical thinking, etc. Improving the quality of the
interviewer is also something to be noted. Most interviews are more informative and accurate than
other methods of information gathering.
Transaction Process: Our online real estate transaction system works very well, but in order to ensure
that it functions at its maximum, we provide solutions to this problem.The purpose of transaction
optimization is to improve the performance of the synchronization point processing between
transaction branches on the client side and the server side. Therefore, multiple types of optimization
can be used in one global transaction.
VR - 360 technology: VR - 360 technology works in our system very well but we will upgrade to make it
suitable for the system in the future. The main component in the real estate online system is VR - 360
technology, this technology is used throughout the system to meet the needs of customers to see a
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360-degree panorama of a real estate that customers want. choice through which they can use the
features of this VR - 360 technology such as zoom in, zoom out, change view modes, etc... In the near
future, we will upgrade this technology by removing some unnecessary features, improving the image
quality to become sharper, and improving the rotation of the technology.
Research process:Process improvement methods include a systematic approach to solving problems
and reducing barriers. The following list contains some examples of quality improvement tools and
why a researcher might use them:
Process Mapping: Helps teams understand the steps involved in a process.
Failure Methods and Effects Analysis (FMEA): Identify possible errors in a process and allow the team
to rank steps based on severity, likelihood, and detectability.
Cause-and-effect diagrams: Clarify the underlying causes of a problem.
Key driver diagrams: Visually show the conditions that need to be met to achieve project goals.
Include brainstormed change ideas.
Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycles: Iterative tests of change allow teams to start small and gradually
scale up their experiment as confidence grows. Their ideas on change are built. These agile cycles are
ideal for getting quick feedback before a team is ready to roll out system-wide changes.
Runcharts: Collect data over time as a line graph. Using statistical rules, it can help teams decide what
is a common cause-and-effect variation and which might be due to the idea being tested. Also allows
teams to track their progress over time.

4. Consider alternative research methodologies for your research topic

Focus Group method

A focus group is best defined as a small group of carefully selected participants who contribute to
open discussions for research. The hosting organization carefully selects participants for the study to
represent the larger population they’re attempting to target.

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 Figure 17 Focus Group method

The application of "Focus group" in our project is to collect information related to the real estate of a
group of people that we gather and have the same interest in real estate. Focus group will be applied
in our project as follows:
We use a focus group in qualitative research. A group of 6-10 people, usually 8 people, meet to
explore and discuss real estate, such as real estate's digital transformation. People come together to
share feedback, opinions, knowledge about the digital transformation of real estate.
Observation Method
The observation method is described as a method to observe and describe the behavior of a subject.
As the name suggests, it is a way of collecting relevant information and data by observing. It is also
referred to as a participatory study because the researcher has to establish a link with the respondent
and for this has to immerse himself in the same setting as theirs. Only then can he use the observation
method to record and take notes.

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 Figure 18 Observation Method

Observation method was added to the project for the purpose of observing user behavior and
gathering information from user behavior. Example for participants to use a number of different
online real estate platforms and observe their performance on those platforms and draw conclusions
as to which platform satisfies them the most or functions, which one makes them most dissatisfied.
Finally, after doing research, I realized my mistakes and learned valuable lessons. From these lessons, I
will draw valuable experiences for myself and improve my abilities. In particular, I have made some
notes and improvements for our future research project on argument shifting in the real estate
industry.

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Reference

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<https://research-methodology.net/research-methods/qualitative-research/observation/>
[Accessed 8 December 2021].
[3]. QuestionPro. 2021. Focus group research | Focus group in qualitative research | QuestionPro.
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2021].
[4]. Small Business - Chron.com. 2021. The Focus Group Research Method. [online] Available at:
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December 2021].
[5]. Guides.lib.vt.edu. 2021. Research Guides: Research Methods Guide: Research Design &
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[Accessed 8 December 2021].
[6]. Editage Insights. 2021. How to choose the research methodology best suited for your study.
[online] Available at: <https://www.editage.com/insights/how-to-choose-the-research-
methodology-best-suited-for-your-study> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

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