Modern Systems Analysis

and Design

Chapter 10
Designing Forms and Reports
Learning Objectives
 Explain the process of designing forms and
reports and the deliverables for their creation.
 Apply the general guidelines for formatting forms
and reports.
 Use color and know when color improves the
usability of information.
 Format text, tables, and lists effectively.

Chapter 10 2
Learning Objectives (Cont.)
 Explain how to assess usability and describe
how variations in users, tasks, technology, and
environmental characteristics influence the
usability of forms and reports.
 Discuss guidelines for the design of forms and
reports for Internet-based electronic commerce
systems.

Chapter 10 3
Designing Forms and Reports

FIGURE 10-1
Systems development
life cycle with logical
design phase
highlighted

Chapter 10 4
Designing Forms and Reports
(Cont.)

 Form: a business document that contains

some predefined data and may include some
areas where additional data are to be filled in
 Examples of business forms are product order
forms, employment applications, and class
registration sheets

Chapter 10 5
Designing Forms and Reports
(Cont.)
 Report: a business document that contains
only predefined data
 It is a passive document used solely for reading
or viewing data.
 Examples of reports include invoices, weekly
sales summaries by region and salesperson
 A report typically contains data from many
transactions.

Chapter 10 6
 The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports
 Designing forms and reports is a user-centered
activity that typically follows a prototyping approach.

 User-centered design refers to a design approach

that involves an understanding of the target
audience, their tasks and goals, information needs,
experience levels, and so on.

 So, to begin, you must gain an understanding of the

intended user and task objectives by collecting initial
requirements during requirements determination
Chapter 10 7
 The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports
 Requirements determination:
 Who will use the form or report?
 What is the purpose of the form or report?
 When is the report needed or used?
 Where does the form or report need to be
delivered and used?
 How many people need to use or view the
form or report?

Chapter 10 8
The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports (Cont.)
 After collecting the initial requirements, you structure
and refine this information into an initial prototype
 Prototyping
 Initial prototype is designed from requirements.
 Users review prototype design and either accept the design
or request changes.
 If changes are requested, the construction-evaluation-
refinement cycle is repeated until the design is accepted.

Chapter 10 9
The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports (Cont.)
 A coding sheet is an “old” tool for designing
forms and reports, usually associated with text-
based forms and reports for mainframe
applications.
 Visual Basic and other development tools
provide computer-aided GUI form and report
generation.

Chapter 10 10
The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-2
The layout of a data
input form using a
coding sheet

Chapter 10 11
The Process of Designing
Forms and Reports (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-3
A data input screen
designed in Microsoft’s
Visual Basic .NET
(Source: Microsoft
Corporation.)

Chapter 10 12
Deliverables and Outcomes
 Designing forms and reports, design
specifications are the major deliverables
and are inputs to the system
implementation phase

Chapter 10 13
Formatting Forms and Reports

Chapter 10 14
 Formatting Forms and Reports
(Cont.)
-The differences between a well-designed form or report
and one that is poorly designed will often be obvious.

FIGURE 10-5
Contrasting customer information
forms
(Pine Valley Furniture)
(Source: Microsoft Corporation.)

(a) Poorly designed form

Chapter 10 15
 Formatting Forms and Reports
(Cont.)

FIGURE 10-5 (continued)

(b) Improved design for

form

Chapter 10 16
 Highlighting Information
 variety of methods will be available to you for highlighting
information.
 There are several situations when highlighting can be a valuable
technique for conveying special information:

 Notify users of errors in data entry or processing.

 Provide warnings regarding possible problems.
 Draw attention to keywords, commands, high-priority messages,
unusual data values.

Chapter 10 17
 Highlighting Information
 Table 10-4 provides a list of the most commonly used methods for
highlighting information

Chapter 10 18
Highlighting Information (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-6
Customer account
status display using
various highlighting
techniques
(Pine Valley
Furniture)

(Source: Microsoft
Corporation.)

Chapter 10 © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 19

Color vs. No Color
Several problems are associated with using colors.

Most of these dangers are related more to the technical

capabilities of the display and hard-copy devices than misuse.

However, color blindness is a particular user issue that is often

overlooked in the design of systems

Chapter 10 20
Color vs. No Color
Benefits from using Color
 Draw attention to warnings
 Evokes more emotional reactions

Problem from using Color

 Resolution May degrade with different displays
 Cause problem for some users ( e.g. blindness)
 Printing or conversion to other media may not be easy
translate

Chapter 10 21
Displaying Text

Chapter 10 22
Displaying Text (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-7
Contrasting the display
of textual help information
(Source: Microsoft
Corporation.)

(a) Poorly designed help

screen with many
violations of the general
guidelines for displaying
text

Chapter 10 23
Displaying Text (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-7
(continued)

(b) An improved
design for a help
screen

Chapter 10 24
Designing Tables and Lists
 As with the display of textual information, tables and lists can also be greatly
enhanced by following a few simple guidelines. These are summarized in
Table 10-7. You should review these guidelines and carefully apply them to
ensure that your tables and lists are highly usable.

Chapter 10 25
 Designing Tables and Lists (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-8
Contrasting the display
of tables and lists (Pine
Valley Furniture)
(Source: Microsoft
Corporation.)

(a) Poorly designed form

Chapter 10 26
Designing Tables and Lists (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-8
(continued)

(b) Improved
design for form
Chapter 10 27
Designing Tables and Lists (Cont.)
When you design the display of numeric information, you must determine
whether a table or a graph should be used.
 tables are best when the user’s task is related to finding an individual data
value from a larger data set, whereas line and bar graphs are more
appropriate for gaining an understanding of data changes over time

Chapter 10 28
Designing Tables and Lists (Cont.)

FIGURE 10-9
Tabular report
illustrating
numerous design
guidelines

(Pine Valley
Furniture)

Chapter 10 © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 29

Designing Tables and Lists (Cont.)
FIGURE 10-10
Graphs for
comparison

(a) Line graph

(b) Bar graph

Chapter 10 © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 30

 Assessing Usability
 Objective for designing forms, reports and
all human-computer interactions is usability.
 There are three characteristics:
 Speed — Can you complete a task efficiently?
 Accuracy — Does the output provide what you
expect?
 Satisfaction — Do you like using the output?

Chapter 10 31
Assessing Usability (Cont.)
 Usability: an overall evaluation of how a
system performs in supporting a
particular user for a particular task

Chapter 10 32
Measures of Usability
 Time to learn
 Speed of performance
 Rate of errors
 Retention over time
 Subjective satisfaction
 Consistency of layout

Chapter 10 33
Measures of Usability (Cont.)

 The layout of information should be

consistent both within and across
applications, whether information is
delivered on screen display or on a hard-
copy report.

Chapter 10 34
Summary
 In this chapter you learned how to:
 Explain the process of designing forms
and reports and the deliverables for their
creation.
 Apply the general guidelines for
formatting forms and reports.
 Use color and know when color improves
the usability of information.

Chapter 10 35
Summary (Cont.)
 Format text, tables, and lists effectively.
 Explain how to assess usability and
describe how variations in users, tasks,
technology, and environmental
characteristics influence the usability of
forms and reports.
 Discuss guidelines for the design of forms
and reports for Internet-based electronic
commerce systems.
Chapter 10 36