project structure: time span, costing etc.

 

 

  • One year project.
  • Spending deadlines
  • Anticipated costing:
  • Stationary
  • Upgrading PC to cope with software demands
  • Purchase of software for survey forms design, software development and video-conferencing.
  • Hardware for video-conferencing such as an ISDN terminal adapter card, microphone and eyeball cameras for two sites.
  • BT ISDN2 connection between Charing Cross Rd. and Southampton Row.
  • Internet Service Provider agreement.
  • Printing/photocopying of questionnaires.
  • Cost of posting questionnaires.
  • Travelling costs to trade shows etc.
  • Cost of processing data.

 

 

 

product purchase:

 

This involved research on the Internet, looking through trade magazines and visiting trade shows to compare prices and features.
  • One of the aims was to provide a low cost solution for designers. Microsoft’s NetMeeting had recently been released. This provided free video-conferencing to users of Windows and Internet access. NetMeeting can be downloaded from Microsoft’s site:

http://www.microsoft.com/netmeeting
  • We used free 'cover disk' form design software to produce the forms.
  • A comparison of various networking technologies was made in May 1997. Modem speeds (33.6-56 KBPS) were not capable of transferring the amount of data required in data-conferencing. BT was pushing ISDN2 at that time as the solution and this seemed the way forward. We had to determine whether this would be compatible with NetMeeting and what the hardware requirements were.

ISDN2 requires an existing telephone line, junction box installation and a terminal adapter card (external or internal).
  • Through the ‘Select’ licence agreement, it was possible to obtain Microsoft software inexpensively. We purchased several software development tools and Microsoft FrontPage 97 to develop the project website.

http://www.csm.u-net.com
  • Later on in the project, it was decided that we should purchases ‘off the shelf’ graphics/imaging tools to assist in the development of the interface. This would be considerably more cost effective than developing these from scratch.