Project Objective
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages requires a Stay The Course "Web Site". This site needs to present in a clear, appealing way the program and courses offerred across Canada. The best way to to this is my building an interactive map.Requirements
The 4 page PDF mock-up demonstrates the requirements quite clearly.The Map will have four views
Canada View
The user can scroll over a map of Canada
The universities will be displayed
The province scrolled over will be highlighted
The user can click on any province to see the Province View
Province View
The user can scroll over a map of a province
The universities will be displayed
A university scrolled over will grow
The user can click on any university to see the University View
University View
The user can scroll over a map of a province
Information about the university will be displayed
Several hyperlinks for more detailed information will be dispalyed
The hyperlinks will grow or change colour when moused over
The hyperlink can be clicked on to see the Text View
Text View
The text view displays textual information related to the hyperlink chosen
The text view will have a scroll bar and must be able to display 500 words
A close hyperlink can be clicked to return to the University View
High Level Requirements
The map must be very easy to updateThe solution must be flexible and easy to maintain
The information must also be available in a printable format
The solution must work within the governments infrastructure
It must be designed to work effectively for
- Anglophones
- Francophones
- Visually impaired
- People with slow connections
- People with older computers
- People with all browsers
- People with an old version of Flash
Limitations
- People who refuse to install Flash will not be able to use the map but can access the text version
- People who use a small wireless device such as a Blackberry may not be able to use the map properly
The Proposal
The solution I recommend has four major components
1) Stay The Course Web Pages
One "home" page plus one page per university
- all will present text information according to usability,
SEO and government standards
- home page will provide a foundation that the FlashMap can be embedded into
2) STC Map
- fully interactive customized flash map will be built
by a professional college-educated animator
- 99% of the visual features shown in the mock-up will be produced
3) STC Data File
- the data for the map will be stored in an XML file
- the use of an Oracle back-end for this project is NOT recommended
- the description of the programs can be provided in
any format at any stage of the project
- the geographic locations of the universities are publicly available
I have used them in my prior university map project
4) STC Editor
- User friendly
- Fast (able to look up a school, change data, and save in less than 1 minute)
- Flexible (able to adjust to changes in the data storage such as extra fields)
- Maintainable (source code will be provided)
- Developed in Visual Basic (the most popular software platform)
- View Image of STC Editor Prototype
Prototypes have already been created to ensure that the critical obstacles can be overcomeProject Team
| Ted Nye | (Chief Developer and Google Map Specialist), North York |
| Lucka Nicolaou | (Flash Animation Expert), Toronto |
| Jean Kanya | (Francophone and Javascript Specialist), Nepean |
Delivery Schedule
May 7th, 2009 (Original Prototype)May 12th, 2009 (Second Prototype)
May 14th, 2009 (Final Version)
Payment Schedule
The fixed price for this project is $2,20050% is payable upon commencement of work
50% is payable upon completion
Maintenance will be provided free of charge for the remainder of 2009
I am available to work on an hourly basis at $60/hour
Prototype of Flash Map Canada View
University-maps.com. My Google Bilingual University Map