System Design

In brief, Design Stage can be summarized into the effort of looking into two sides of the wall; System Flow Design and Interface Design. In real, there should be a balance of both to enhance the system capabilities to serve the intended objective.


System Flow Design

Personally, this will be the foremost design process that need to be detailed by the System Analyst (SA) and as well the Business Development Team (BD). Detailing the logic flow of all business processes in the system or within system boundary, any mishap will result into inefficiency of the system or producing unintended output. Top down analysis and later bottom to top construction are normally involved. 

The system is broken down into chains of affecting modules or collections of features. Each module or collection are manned by silos involving matrix of resources from various department. Silos are developed to provide the required knowledge to power the modules/ features. Each processes involved in the modules are finely detailed and later "chained" to provide a seamless business flow or in some organization is identified as the sub-systems.

Once documentation and logic is prepared from various silos, the sub-systems are merged into the final process. Commonly known as system integration, the phase does not only involved a completely developed system. During design, sub-systems are integrated on "paper" to, to address the problem in the final production output.

In many times, one or several sub-systems are modified accordingly to venture into a better interaction among sub-systems. Generally, secondary sub-systems are involved in the processes. Secondary sub-systems are known to be less vital as compared to primary sub-systems which served as the back bone of any final system. "Print" sub system for instance may required re-organization or modification in order to serve the purpose of other primary sub-system. This is important to allow better utilization of the "Print" sub system and to allow non unique features from depositing in the "Print" sub system.


Interface Design

This area of design has been a heat topic since being introduced in many system development life cycle. In a unique scenario, this phase of designed is normally to be conducted by User Interface Expertise who venture their knowledge domain in understanding Human Behavior, Design and Program Functionality. Due to the lapsed of expertise, the individuals involved in Interface Design often mistaken as Graphic Designer or Business Development Executive.

Not to be mistaken, Interface Design requires high degree of understanding of the system design and user's interaction experience. In this phase, it is vital for the personnel to identify the key features and plan on the system experience. A good design will lead to a better system utilization. At some points, a good design will improve user experience by reducing system errorness due to poor and misleading system design.

User experience is important to garner system utilization and influence in decision making. This is especially true when it involve high degree of user interaction among the system features. Take an instance on web application; a poor design will likely discourage new user participation and reduce the penetration rate of any new application into the market. On the same note, a good Interface Design will improve development time sheet by a great mile. A good user acceptance will likely be resulted from a clear and indicative system design.


Conclusion

System Design phase is not all about solid processes mix and match, but is a process that involve a good combination element of functions and implementation. Good feature without a solid base for implementation, will not take off to produce the best result of a system. Thus, as a developer, to plan is to design. To design is to be well implemented. Stuffed in the middle of between scratch and final out, design is the only phase that allow full connection to reduce the possibility of a failed system.