Realization:

Based on the phase 1 documentation used for the student organizer, our team concluded the emphasis was on the "To-Do" list functionality, with the ability to track grades as the next priority. Therefore, the display of information was of most importance. A few points we considered within our design were easy access, uncluttered, and easy manipulation of events and courses. Easy access, on start up of the application, most common tasks will be available already. Most users during the course of the grade will use the organizer for quick information, such as, “What is an assignment worth?” or “What grade did I get on this assignment again?” This also cooperates with how we dealt with clutter, which is by categorizing objects into lists. The task, course, and to-do list are examples of this. They are visible on start up and use an expanding view that reveals additional details about an item. A user simply has to click on a course and additional categories for that course are made available to them.

Visible functions supported in our design include: storing of a list of courses, add and removal of courses, task-list, association of task to courses, to-do list generation, information input, course mark calculation, one click all course removal, and time frame selection of to-do list. Another requirement was the need for no clutter, and as mentioned above, this was already emphasized within our design. The other requirements were non-functional in nature, that is, the need for multiplatform capability and for low memory usage. The "Java" platform is one of the most widely available cross-platform systems, and when using lightweight toolkits (like AWT or basic drawing functions) would probably fit the required constraint. Alternatives would be to use C++ and the wxWidgets cross-platform GUI toolkit, or another interpreted system (like Squeak).