The Quota and Points System (QPS) was introduced by the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) in September 2005 to rationalise and re-prioritise the allocation of public rental housing (PRH). The HA department would like to develop an online web system for the public servant and applicants to update and check for their application status. This system will replace the existing paper based QPS monitoring system.

(a) During the interview with the HA staff, they mentioned the following view of their expectation.

Our existing paper-based system requires a lot of documents and forms posting between the applicant and our staff. We would like to speed up the response time by making the form online. The applicant should be able to check their updated status at any time. They system should not be off-line for more than one hour in a year.

A significant proportion of the applicants are not highly educated, and quite a number of them are elderly citizen. They complained that the buttons and texts were too small in our other webpages as well. They prefer bigger icon and Chinese explanation.

Our staff will invite the applicants with dubious returns to attend interviews for detailed financial checking. After the checking, our staff would use the online system to update the status of application. When the status is updated, the applicant can see their updated status in the online system immediately. In the case that the application was canceled due to the checking, the applicant can place an appeal through the online system.

Please formulate 3 different user requirements in terms of functional, non-functional and user experience. (15 marks)

(b) The project manager noticed that as part of the procurement requirement, the final product must comply with the Accessibility Guidelines specified in the Web Accessibility Handbook 1 .

i. Please recommend an evaluation method and explain why you would choose this method. (10 marks)

ii. The project manager feel that this accessibility guideline would only increase the project cost without any benefit. Please provide some reasons in supporting Universal Usability.