The Design Stage

Questions:
1. Summarise what the ‘Design’ stage involves.
This is where the new system is planned thoroughly to make sure that the developers know how
each screen should look and how the system should work.

2. List and explain 7 tasks that happen within the design stage.

Task
1. Designing data entry screens
2. Designing user-interface layout
3. Designing printed outputs (reports etc)
Explanation
how will data be entered into system... e.g. text
boxes, drop-down menu
what will the system's menus, search facilities
etc look like
what will printed outputs look like... e.g.
payslip's, customer bills etc.

4. Designing screen-based outputs what will outputs that are displayed on the
screen look like

5. Designing structures to store data e.g. for databases, tables will need to be
designed to hold the system's record.

6. Designing data validation methods how will the system prevent invalid / incorrect
data from being entered

7. Designing data verification methods how will the system check that entered data is
correct

3. Explain what system validation is.

a computer system checks that data entered by the user is

sensible and usable

IGCSE ICT: Unit 7 - Systems Life Cycle Mark Nicholls - ICT Lounge
 4. Give an example of a validation rule (not the same one as on the ictlounge) that could be
applied to a system. You should also explain the scenario where the validation rule would be
used to reject invalid data.

Example of the validation rule Scenario that could make use of a

Validation rule in the system states that
learner drivers need to be 17 years or older
validation rule
If a user try's to enter a new student's age as 16
the system will not allow the data to be entered
and the person will not able to book driving
lessons

5. Describe 5 validation checks along with a description of what they do and an example of how
they could be applied in a real-life scenario

Validation Description Real-life example

check
Presence check Checks that data has been If a user misses out required data
entered and not missed out (such as a postco system not allow
them to progress
Format check Makes sure that data is in a Dates should be entered in the
specific format format of dd/mm

Data type check / Data type check Checks that
entered data does not contain
invalid characters
Consistency check Makes sure that data in one field
is consistent with data in another
field
Limit check Performed on numbers to make
sure that data is not above or
below a specified limit.
6. Explain what system verification is.
Pure number fields (distance,
temperature etc) s not allow for text
to be entered
If 'Male' has been typed into a
gender field, the per title cannot be
'Mrs'
A learner driver's age must be >

a way of making sure that data being entered into the system exactly
matches the source of the data

7. Describe 2 verification checks along with a description of what the checks entail.

Verification check Description

Double entry 1. data is entered twice by two different people.
2. often used when you set up online accounts

Visual check the person entering data into the computer system carefully
compares what they have entered with the data in the original
document

IGCSE ICT: Unit 7 - Systems Life Cycle Mark Nicholls - ICT Lounge
IGCSE ICT: Unit 7 - Systems Life Cycle Mark Nicholls - ICT Lounge