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IS480 Team wiki: 2010T2 B.I. JOE

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Team B.I.JOE

Project Title: Geospatial Dashboard for Integrated Distribution Services Analytics


Roles & Responsibilities

Member(s) Roles Responsibilities
Gary Tan Ying Da Project Manager Liaison, Tester, Schedule tracking, Assistant Programmer for Secondary Panel
Ng Wei Quan Assistant Project Manager Administrative duties; minutes, Update Wikipedia, Risk mitigation, Lead Programmer for Secondary Panel
Marcus Yap Interface Designer Front-end design: user interface and graphics; Interface Designer
Isaac Lim Code Developer Lead Programmer for Primary Panel, Debug and Code Integration
Sim Sing Hong Code Developer Back-end design: Database Engineer, Debugger, Assistant Programmer for Primary Panel

FYP Supervisor

Zhu Feida, Assistant Professor of Information Systems

Project Overview

Stakeholders

Stakeholder Name Designation Involvement
Sponsor Dr. Kam Tin Seong Practice Associate Professor, School of Information Systems Work with the team to produce project specifications and provide essential data to the team. Participate in Usability Assessment.
Client Nicholas Tan Director IT Application, IDS Group Malaysia Provide company information and data to the team.
Client Paul Fowler CIO, IDS Group Ensure that the project operates under IDS company guidelines.
End Users IDS Group Employees Merchanising and Distribution Services Departments Participate in UAT and provide feedback for functionalities.
End Users Business Principals of IDS Business Partners of IDS Group Participate in UAT and provide feedback for functionalities.
Supervisor Zhu Feida Assistant Professor of Information Systems, SMU Advise the team on project, direct the team along course guidelines.



Background

IDS Logo.jpg

IDS provide outsourced services to various clients. They generate analysis reports using their own applications and emailing them daily, weekly and monthly. IDS has selectively shared information on the web but now wishes to develop a portal dashboard that converts online data into analysis reports that provides an immediate picture of the situation and facilitates rapid decision making.

Storyboard

Storyboard 01.jpg Storyboard 02.jpg Storyboard 03.jpg

Storyboard 04.jpg Storyboard 05.jpg Storyboard 06.jpg


Objectives

To create data visualisation under a Business Intelligence portal for IDS employees to extract information and make analysis through better visual representation of data.


Project Scope

The system is a visualization and analysis tool that provides multi-dimensional and multi-granularity views of the data based on an interactive and dynamic map platform.
The entire system can be summaries into three different modules


1. Navigation Module

This module resides mainly at the primary panel. It provides the navigation functions for user to view the map visualization with flexibility.

  • Navigation
    • Tool pad – Allows user to move up, down, left, right of the map.
    • Zoom Slider – Allows user to zoom in and out of particular region.
    • Home – Bring user back to default navigation settings.
  • Dynamic Map ScaleImplement map scale that changes according to the zoom level.
  • Dynamic LegendLegend changes according to the icon allocated to the marker by the user.
  • Map Provider Selectionallows user to select their preferable map provider as well as reduce reliance on one map provider.
  • Icon Manager
    • Filter outlet – checkbox for user to shortlist the outlet they would like to see.
    • Icon selection – allows user to select the customized icon to represent particular outlet.
    • Upload customized icon – upload new customized icon.


2. Visualization Module

This module provides views for data both in data visualization way as well as map visualization way. It is being supported by Analysis Module.

  • Time series recordto see data changes over time both on the data visualization and map visualization.
  • Data Visualization
    • TreeMap
    • Scatter Plot
  • Map Visualization
    • Marker
      • Info bubble – show characteristic of the outlet with outlet image attached. Also allow user to upload image of outlet if it is wrong or unavailable.
      • Highlighting – marker will be highlighted when filter is being executed or hovering over the data visualization.
      • Focus Marker – when data is being selected at the data visualization, it will focus and zoom on the marker.
  • Snap shot – allow users to print geographic image to be shown in report.
  • Configuration – allow users to manipulate visualization options.


3. Analysis Module

This module provides spatial analysis and temporal analysis for user. Data retrieved will be map onto Visualization Module.

  • Search by attributes – search data point according to categories, location or Key Performance Indicator (Refer to Project Scope)
  • Spatial search – perform search within x meter of the area on the given spot to find out if the promotion is effective around the area.
  • View Data – view whole data set in table form.



Project Management

Project Metrics

Bug Metric v2.png


Project Schedule


FYP Schedule 30.12.10 v4 image v1.gif


Current Project Status

  • Phase 2



Progress Summary

Phase 1

  • Completed map layout
  • Data retrieval
  • Screen layout
  • Primary visualisation
  • Secondary visualisation
  • Usability assessment


Phase 2

  • Completed overall layout (Map, Treemap, other visualisations)
  • Search by KPI & Categories
  • Finalised Treemap algorithm
  • Created groups and nodes
  • Researching new API (Juicekit)



Team Calendar and Important Dates

Team Calendar


Important Dates

  • Start 16 May 10 & 3 Oct 10 (3 months before)
  • Proposal 16 Jun 10 (29 teams) & 3 Nov 10 (2 months before)
  • Acceptance 9 Aug 10 (26 accepted) & 27 Dec 10 (1 week before)
  • Registration 16 Aug 10 & 3 Jan 11 (1st day of class)
  • Midterm 27 Sep 10 & 14 Feb 11 (week 7)
  • Poster 8 Nov 10 & 28 Mar 11 (week 13)
  • Final presentation 22-28 Nov 10 & 11-17 Apr 11 (week 15)
  • Finals 28 Nov 10 & 17 Apr 11



Project Documentation

Project Proposal

Proposal


Design Considerations


  • ====Sequence Diagram====


Search Function
Sequence-diag-1.jpg

Map Provider Function
Sequence-diag-2.jpg



  • Treemap


How to understand and read a treemap

Treemap-example-1.jpg

There are three things you need to know to understand how to read a treemap:

1. Treemaps show hierarchical data.
Treemaps are often used to show hierarchical data in which each "parent" can have many "children" but each "child" only has one "parent". A good example of this type of data is the biological classification of species, which starts with Kingdom at the highest level, followed by Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and finally Species. Most treemaps have fewer layers, like the SmartMoney Map of the Market which classifies publicly traded companies into industries, resulting in just two levels (i.e. industry, company).

2. Treemaps show two measures simultaneously using the size and color of boxes.
Size of the boxes represent a quantity measure where the individual box sizes must sum up to the category in which they exist. Think of a series of pie charts wherein all the slices of each pie chart must add up to the whole, precluding the use of growth rates or dates or any other data that doesn't aggregate.

Color in a treemap is used to show a range of values distinct from the size measure. Color is better suited to a measure of performance or change such as growth over time, average conversion rate, or customer satisfaction. Not only does color give an indication of a measure for an individual item in the treemap, the collective heatmap effect conveys a broader understanding the full data set.

3. Treemaps use interactive features for exploration.
Showing all the data at once in a treemap would overwhelm users and undermine the value of the visualization. To reveal data gradually as the user expresses interest, most treemaps offer interactive features including: 1) selectors to let the user decide what the size and color should represent; 2) zooming to allow the user to drill-in to layers, simultaneously narrowing the scope the data and revealing deeper layers; 3) detailed data about an individual branch or leaf presented as a tooltip or area outside the treemap; 4) highlighting of specified items based on a user search or selection.

Given their ability to show a comprehensive view of a system in an structured fashion, treemaps can be very instructive. The easiest thing to pick out are the items that are both big (by size of the box) and bad (by color intensity). For example, if you have a treemap of financial costs for your organization, the big, red colored boxes are going to be the costs that are worth your attention and changing significantly.




Current Project Challenges (Updated Weekly)

as of 10/01/2011


Inconsistent Data Format

Client is co-operative and kind enough to provide us with operations data ranging from day-to-day to monthly transactions. This valuable data gives us an in-depth information and idea of the company’s operations. From the data, we are able to gather insights and identify what are some of the problems the company is facing.

However, the greatest challenge to our team is the inconsistent data provided by the various departments of the company. Every individual department has its own set of data and data dictionary. Together with the vast amount of data, cleaning up and massaging of data requires some time.


Converting of Data Language

IDS is based in Hong Kong. As such, most of the end-users are Chinese native. Parts of the data are being input using Chinese characters. As such, when using such data, we would have to ensure the conversion of the data from .xls format into .dbf, data is not being lost in the midst of it.


Treemap API

Treemap visualization is one of the key data visualization models in our project. Having to synchronize the treemap visualization with live data is one of the key challenge is our project.

There are several APIs that are open-source in the market. Each of them has their pros and cons and currently, we are evaluating and exploring each option.

Team Reflection and Learning Outcomes

As of 26/12/2010

  • Identify key benefits of utilising visual analytics in a company.
  • Identify if a specific requirement is a functional or non-functional requirement.
  • Design and implement a spatial enabled business intelligence application prototype using real-life scenarios.
  • Identify key project implementation risks and propose possible solutions to minimise any risks identified.
  • Monitor project implementation schedule using a Gantt chart (MS Project).
  • Applied search for case studies, sample applications and coding examples from social media such as blogs, user forums.
  • The ability to handle spatially-enabled business data.
  • Understand the end users’ technical requirements.
  • Using development software such as Flex Builder to design RIA-based visual analytics application.
  • Have a better understanding on Flex 4, Flash Builder 4, PHP, Action-script 3 and Database.


Project Supervisor Meeting Minutes

Supervisor Meeting 01

Project Sponsor Meeting Minutes

Sponsor Meeting 01

Sponsor Meeting 02