APROACHING TO EMOTINAL CONTEXT ON INFORMATION

SYSTEMS DESIGN IN A WEB SITE FRONT-OFFICE

DEVELOPMENT - A CASE STUDY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

Octávio Pereira, Tiago Luís, Pedro António

Department of Computing, Superior School of Technology, Av. Empresario, Castelo Branco, Portugal

Eduardo Valente, Joao Caldeira, Paulo Alves, Paulo Jesus, João Cordeiro

Department of Computing, Superior School of Technology, Av. Empresario, Castelo Branco, Portugal

Keywords: Web, PHP, LAMP, MySQL, Health.

Abstract: In the beginning of this paper, a web application development context is described to an analysis laboratory

for agriculture purposes. Safety and hygiene matters are introduced as actual concerns for public health and

then defined the emotional context appealing interaction between users and web application and information

systems in general. The project implementation is then described and finally, some conclusions are taken.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, in the information systems era, the main

goal of a company is to obtain profits from the

internal knowledge and resources. This purpose is

often poor in terms of information management and

for business processes organization and

optimisation. Considering that employees are the

technology itself as they work on the process flow,

any computer application development can be

accomplished when carrying the information flow to

optimise. So, an information system project takes

place, and can be often referred actually on a system

integration or workflow context issues (Linthicum,

2003).

The globalisation pressure creates opportunities for

web-based applications to be installed, representing

a company or a community. Social classrooms are

created, organized into groups of people, by social,

professional, occupational, ethnic or religious

characteristics or generally by common interests

with a slight knowledge of “social spaces”. A web

page is actually a natural thing to connect or relate

any company reality to a business application,

because in these days, either you are on the internet,

or you don’t, and work as so (Alin et al, 2000).

The web based application development starts, and

then the company is involved with the front office

layout content definition and customisations to

implement and satisfy the requirements. Computer

networks are also essential components of any

current information system. Through the

interconnection of systems and networks it is

possible for a huge amount of services and resources

to become available to computer system users,

transforming the individual ranks of work into true

doors accessing the Global Information Society

(Monteiro and Boavida, 2000).

Life and work conditions have evolved considerably

in Portugal along the recent years. In agriculture,

such effort of progress and development has

introduced new technologies that changed the

agriculturist way of life and related communities.

The appearance of regional laboratories for analysis

deserves special attention, together with its Internet

access. This came to modify deep and quickly the

working methods, implying an increase of

production and the quality of life. The public health

is today a concept of holistic matter and is more and

more considered to population. People want to feel

good, to live with safety, to watch on what to have

confidence, to have certified organizations and

products near by (Honoré, 2000).

302

Pereira O., Luís T., António P., Valente E., Caldeira J., Alves P., Jesus P. and Cordeiro J. (2007).

APROACHING TO EMOTINAL CONTEXT ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS DESIGN IN A WEB SITE FRONT-OFFICE DEVELOPMENT - A CASE

STUDY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 302-305

DOI: 10.5220/0002385403020305

 SciTePress

However, such factors itself are generating security

and hygiene problems to professional farmers. Their

fast introduction and diffusion in agricultural paths

will be a privileged way for changing the existing

wrong processes, allowing professionals to know the

new associated risks on their own profession,

making a significant set of traditional knowledge

obsolete, which is mostly deep rooted on the

agricultural and regional culture environment. These

factors determine the motivation needs to the

agriculture intervenient for preventing risks, and also

for identifying the proper techniques to some

specific tasks. In this way, the motivation of these

professionals for prevention has to be inserted into

an information process of education that complies

with agriculture tradition (Miguel, 2006).

When looking for a reference on clinical analysis or

equivalent, we have found the Dr. Ricardo Jorge

National Health Institute (INSA, 2006) and

Lamartine Clinical Analysis (Lamartine, 2006), both

relying in Portugal as analysis laboratories national

references. For protection rights we will call the

implicit organization in study on this paper as

LABSTATEORG, for it represents a laboratory and

belongs to a state ministry organization as the called

name suggests. The LABSTATEORG purpose is to

deliver healthcare and some analysis and quality

information results in a systematic way to the public

local community, in order to contribute to public

health. The project pretends to be a web site to

manage and satisfy the requirements to a farmer’s

community, matching the local rural activity and

agriculture issues and deliver the appropriate

services. Some intent to reach by this information

system is to catch customer opinions, in order to

identify problems or lacks in service to improve the

laboratory quality of service.

LABSTATEORG possesses human resources and

material that has looked to leverage its active

participation in the economic, social and cultural

region development where it is inserted. The actual

cooperation protocols are numerous within a

significant set of enterprise structures, production

and support to the agriculturists, to cooperate and

reply on the resolution of its necessities. The

agriculturists insertion and their involving way has

been a constant concern, stimulating the inquiry in

the directly related domains with the regional

necessities, giving services to the community, in a

feedback perspective of regional development value.

Continuous technology innovations has constrained

the society way of life in being and thinking. For

instance, at school, information technologies are the

most visible face of that change. Web based

communities provide a privileged space to its virtual

environment, so that each participant can act in his

own way, to learn and interact with others,

transforming the web community into a knowledge

community. Thus, its importance and it’s

prominence is today recognized in the valuation and

setting of the human resources core competencies

and to promote a development process supported in

the different sources that constitute the agricultural

world, either the production, the alimentary products

transformation, or the environment preservation that

encircles it (Honoré, 2000).

In the rest of this paper, we discuss the subtle

relation between the user and the web application in

the context of an information system development

and then describing the options taken in the

implementation and finally some conclusions.

2 THE USER INTERFACE

EMOTIONAL CONTEXT

PROBLEM DOMAIN

Science is, on thought about reality, not about

tradition, conventions or constructions. Even so,

computer science seems too centred on two

traditional constructors, the hierarchical simulation

or paper simulation. It’s a popular myth that

structure means hierarchy, and it is just a popular

concept that electronic documents can replace the

paper. These two concepts have the advantage to be

easily explained to beginners. According to this,

since the 40’s that we have simulated hierarchies to

organize computer files and since the 60’s we have

simulated the paper documents, from text edition to

text processing and web publishing. Actually,

mixing the hierarchy simulation with paper

simulation is offered to us through the Adobe

Acrobat application (Adobe, 2006) that simulates

both simultaneously and XML – Extended Markup

Language (W3C, 2006), a standard that can

transform the paper simulation into hierarchy

simulation and vice-versa. They can be seen as ideal

exercises to complete the paradigms of paper and

hierarchy, passing through on top vital matters. In

spite of mimesis the real world, we should be

correcting the lacks for paper and hierarchies. The

fact that things are easier to explain and understand

does not make them more correct. Hierarchical

organizations are wrong, and generally are

incapable. Vital forms of information structures

cannot be represented in convenience into

hierarchies – structures like parallelism, crossed

connection, inter penetration and poli-presence

meaning one item into many places. Designing the

APROACHING TO EMOTIONAL CONTEXT ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS DESIGN IN A WEB SITE

FRONT-OFFICE DEVELOPMENT - A CASE STUDY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

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organization of files, a set of relationships is forced

to be done, and artificially, considered essential and

central. We must choose only one hierarchy, like

time, project, importance, injuring the other

representations. This assumption can leverage some

base addresses that should be covered, then by other

conventions as pseudonyms, shortcuts and databases

(Menezes, 2005).

The LABSTATEORG processes were done all by

paper in the past, and the computers were just

isolated between them and from the internet. There

was no structured network or any privileged way for

structuring the electronic information. The paper

simulation is also wrong and, generally, it is

incapable. Vital matters and document structures are

actually ignored in the paper simulation like covers

and document parallels, of which notations and

spiral controversy are key examples. Issues like

versions administration, rights administered citation,

and original context availability and the spiral

controversy are key examples. Taking away these

traditional structures bring us many choices to take

in place, which aren’t explored yet. As a concept

proof, a web application must be tested so that users

can experience benefits on new workflow process.

Demonstrative examples of these systems already

circulate for some time. Now it is time to construct

user-guided environments to leave traditional

principles. New environments can be more sensible

and inhabitable for the common user, and more

adapted to the interests for people that the

conventional and traditional structures that we have

constructed since always. In the conventional

paradigm, users must be worried about the

nomination of filing cabinets, hierarchy and

localization and users need different applications for

its worlds of information. Fifty years of tradition on

computer science are being cured and annulled to

open possibilities that we still don’t suspect

(Menezes, 2005).

A virtual community is constructed from common

interests, knowledge, mutual projects and exchange

values, settled in a cooperation process. For the

community to have success, in contrast of what

many defend, what matters is not the rules imposed,

nor the proper technology, but the people, like the

professor still the main picture today in school,

almost always related with the owner of knowing,

the gentleman, he has to teach the way, to show the

certain missed. Only changing our way of thinking

we can modify deeply rooted politics and practices.

Only changing our interacting form we will be able

to establish shared visions and understandings, and

new capacities to coordinate action. A learning

process that modifies the mental models is highly

challenging, perplexing. It can be frightful when

collating beliefs and estimated consecrated, it cannot

be made separately. It only occurs inside of a

community of apprentices. The feeling to belong, the

notion that the individual is part of all, and that it

cooperates to a common purpose with the other

members, the territoriality, the permanence, are

essential conditions for the establishment of social

relations. The social relations between the members

of a virtual community are never distant (Lévy,

1999) (Palloff and Pratt, 1999).

The social life of a community is necessary, for it

provides the involvements for sharing knowledge

and to the community success itself. These relations

are constructed through the mutual interaction

between the individuals, in a period of time, having

the permanence understood as a continuous secular

space of relationship between its basic requirements.

The proper community is organized and auto-

regulated. All members learn reading the messages,

and helping themselves when a situation, problem or

question appears. During the interaction processes,

the members construct and express abilities, which

can be recognized and are valued immediately by

the community itself as it constructs intellectual

affinities, partnerships and alliances, feelings of

friendship and others. It is developed in the groups

of interaction, in the same way as it happens

between people who are close physically to talk. In

the virtual communities of learning, the on-line

relations are very far from being cold. They do not

exclude the emotions. The personality of each

participant finishes being expressed through the

style of writing, abilities, taking of position,

evidenced in the human beings relationships or

interactions. The leader appears naturally. Roles are

assumed clearly. Between the members of virtual

communities, it is also developed a strong concept of

social moral, a species of behaviour code, a set of

norms not written in normal relations (Lévy, 1999).

3 IMPLEMENTATION

When applying technology in a software engineering

project, some boundary issues should be considered.

In this particular case was the internet or network,

the web language and the database. Some documents

were produced in order to specify clearly the

problem needs and requirements, using a proper

development process methodology for the problem

domain. There were two students working on this

project, a professor and the coordinator from the

LABSTATEORG. The development process

methodology taken was RAD (Rapid Application

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Development) and a LAMP like technology

arquitecture (Linux – Apache – MySQL - PHP).

Linux is for the operative system, Apache is for the

Web Server, MySQL is for the database and PHP is

for the web language. In spite of the server could be

other than Apache or the operating system can be

Linux or other, the structure stays the same. We

have chosen MySql database and PHP because they

are free (Alin et al, 2000). The web application was

integrated with other database and application,

which has to manage back-office information. The

front-office is the one mainly considered because of

the man-machine interfacing problem domain. The

logical model was designed with Unified Modelling

Language (Muller, 1997) (Fowler and Scott, 1997).

To the creation of web pages, PHP (Hypertext pre-

processor) is capable to generate a bigger

interactivity with users, as well as creating HTML

pages for the Web in a dynamic way. Beyond

operation in almost all the known operating systems,

it has a null cost of acquisition, which allies its

easiness of learning and use, becoming one of the

best web development languages. This tool makes

the creation of applications possible on different

types of platforms equally, due of being extremely

attractive and robust, providing implemented

functionalities, becoming the election tool for the

Web community in applications development.

Advanced programmers are able to concentrate

themselves in the most complex chapters such as

interaction with database or XML, in order to perfect

its knowledge (Serrão and Marques, 2005).

4 CONCLUSIONS

Due to the strong interaction between developers

and the organization along the project, the users

become totally pleased with the application, for all

process were negotiated together.

The LAMP arquitecture revealed to be a very easy

way to implement any web application, minimizing

the development effort. The time for problem

analysis is then bigger and thus more considered.

Usability is a very important issue to consider when

defining the user interface of any application. The

emotional context of information appearance and the

way it is revealed enforces the familiarity with users

as they perceive the information and interact better.

The community concept is also important, so that

users can feel a useful application with the

emotional context though to be present.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work had also the contribution of Eng. Sérgio

Tavares and Eng. Maria Joao Águas.

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