System Development Life Cycle

The project in which I was not able to achieve the intended project outcome was during my design and development of a customized remote control for my car’s VCR. Since most remote controls existing in shops were not comfortable when I used them, I decided to develop a remote that met my personal preferences during usage (Sabale & Dani, 2012). Consequently, I made the remote with the buttons as illustrated in the figure below.

The design stage of the remote required that I place the commonly used controls on a ring at the center of the remote. Despite my frequent use of the ‘stop’ button, I forgot to design it in a manner that it could be visible or could be accessed easily without the likelihood to cause an error during its use. For instance, I wanted to prevent the previous mistakes that I have made such as using a different button when I needed to use the ‘stop’ button. The resulting error is that the ‘stop’ button was placed in the far right corner and the ‘eject’ button was placed in opposite position to it (Sabale & Dani, 2012).

The main reason why the project failed is that the actual design did not account for the most commonly used controls such as ‘stop’ and ‘play’ by making them bigger compared with other controls. Based on the System Development Life Cycle, the Design Phase could have accounted for the visibility of the buttons when creating the layout in which they will be placed in the remote sensor (Sabale & Dani, 2012).

In the improved design of the transmitter, I would develop the remote with the stop and the start buttons larger and maintain the position of the ‘stop’ button but interchange the ‘eject’ button with the play button. I will also ensure the ‘play’ button is large enough to enable the user to see it when using the remote (Sabale & Dani, 2012).

Reference

Sabale, R. G., & Dani, A. R. (2012). Comparative study of prototype model for software engineering with system development life cycle.  IOSR Journal of Engineering ,  2 (7), 21- 24.