School of Science and Technology 科技學院
Computing Programmes 電腦學系
| Programme | Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computing |
| Supervisor | Dr. Oliver Au |
| Areas | Smart Living |
| Year of Completion | 2015 |
The project aims to develop a web-based wedding planning application, iWedding, accessible through browsers or smartphones. The purpose of iWedding is to guide wedding couples through the decision-making process and provide them advices on budget and planning. Important information such as dates suitable for wedding is also provided. Other built-in tools like the guest list and seating planner are given to assist couples in inviting guests and assign appropriate banquet seating. In case the couples encounter difficulties during planning, they can seek help from consultants who advertise their services on iWedding.
In order to achieve the aims, the project has defined a number of objectives as follows:
The basic design concept of this project is to create a usable wedding planning application with a layout that adapts to changes in users' information easily. By studying similar applications and researching on design guidelines, the application layout is designed.
The first step of wedding planning is to arrange a schedule for preparatory works. Couples can use the scheduling tools with built-in task template which suggest what they should do during wedding preparation, and when they should do the task.
Besides scheduling tools which mainly focus on the preparation stage, a rundown template is also provided for suggesting the flow of events on the wedding day. Couples can make appropriate changes to the template.
A lot of money will be spent during wedding preparation. An effective way to manage the budget is needed. The budget calculator with template allows couples to record the budget and expenditure of each item, and display them in a table. Total amount and subtotal are automatically calculated.
To invite guest to participate the wedding ceremony, guest list is a powerful tools. It allows couples to jot down the details of guests they want to invite.
After adding some guest, it is time to consider where the guests should seat. A seating plan allowing couples to plan the tables of banquet is provided.
Helper list is provided for couples to gather all the helper's information in one place. Couples can jot down the post and contact details of a helper.
To help couples select suitable vendors, a vendor list is provided. Couples can browse vendors by category or search with keyword.
Couples can get service discount through iWedding to lower the budget. They can either print out the coupons or show the electronic version to vendors.
Couples can upload their wedding photo online and share them with guests.
As the target user of iWedding would be adults of any age with different education level and computer skills, designing an easy-to-use system is important. To evaluate the usability, several testers from different age ranges will be invited to perform think-aloud testing, which is to give participant several tasks to perform and ask them to speak out what are they doing and thinking while performing the tasks. By observing the time used to perform a task by each tester and emotion of tester.
The usability testing proved that the system is user-friendly and easy to use, as none of the task in the thin-aloud testing requires more than three attempts.
The feedbacks received are positive. Participants and interviewees agree that the scheduling tools and rundown planner with templates provided guidance in wedding planning. Budget calculator can help in budgeting by providing total amount of money used and pie chart of expenditure distribution. There is also a reasonable amount of wedding preparation tools which can cover most of the important tasks couples need to perform.
There is room for improvement in the vendor search function. Most of the testers and the interviewee think that the “order by” in vendor search is difficult to find, and the terms are ambiguous.
As couples are facing problems in wedding planning, budgeting and finding vendors, iWedding was initiated. iWedding is an integrated wedding planning application which provides various tools to assist couples. The provided templates solve problems that couples lack knowledge and reduce the chances they forgot a task. Budget Calculator gives couples an up-to-date view on expenditure of each item and the total expenditure. Vendor lists with rating and comments will be references for couples to choose vendors that suit their needs.
iWedding currently does not support customizing the notification, like turning off notifications, resending notifications and reminding the number of days to the event. It is programmed to notify user 1 day before the event. The notification features requires user to install application on their phone, and is only for Android users currently, but not iOS user.
Copyright Lam Yuen Ying and Oliver Au 2015
