Contents

This is a tender to the European Commission outlining Switchblade Designs latest multimedia production "Theatreland On-line". The consortium consists of four people:

• Hasan Nurmohamed.
• Nilesh Parmar.
• Reena Shah.
• Sachin Shah.

We have relevant skills and the latest technology to carry out such a project. Our mission statement is:

"To be the most innovative, exciting and successful, Virtual Theatre Guide On-line and to continually embrace new exciting technologies in our field"

Our proposal is to:

To develop and maintain a Virtual Theatre Guide of the best theatres and shows on in London, giving our audience an experience of virtually being at the theatre through the Internet.

We aim to:

• To create a web site that will be a virtual theatre guide for shows in London with a brief description of the theatre, its location, price, availability, seating plans and finally a bit about the show etc.
• To be the market leader.
• To eventually produce The Virtual Theatre guide on a multimedia CD.
  

The consortium has calculated as an approximation, a sum of ECU 32,368 will be required for our tender to proceed.

This tender will be valid for a period of six months beginning 15 January 1999.

Switchblade Designs sets out to undertake and develop a Virtual Theatre Guide. The virtual theatre will provide information for the selected market about theatre shows in London, where they are, prices, and how they can book etc.

The consortium aim to deliver this information via the Internet. The business sector of the Internet is rapidly growing and has created a new space in which to do business. People that have access to the Internet can easily find out about theatres in London and can explore many different shows by navigating their way through the web site.

Our web site will incorporate pictures, images, graphics, animation, sound, text and virtual reality. Our site will be fun, exciting and informative. It will also be easy to use, encouraging the use of Internet technology.

We have conducted market analysis and have come to the conclusion that Switchblade Designs have an innovative idea that would be a viable multimedia production. We have defined our target market and have summarised a technical proposal for our Theatreland On-line production.

The online theatre guide industry has experienced a rapid growth over the past 30 months as more businesses and established theatre guides have realised the benefits of the Internet as another marketing medium.

The popularity of the Internet is growing exponentially. Those who are familiar with the information superhighway are well aware of how fun, addictive and relaxing surfing the Net can be.

Due to extensive competition, new online theatre guides must look for ways to differentiate their place of business from others in order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. Switchblade Designs realise this need for differentiation, which is why our site will be unique from all those on the web at the moment. Our site will be a truly interactive multimedia experience that aim�s to immerse the user in a virtual Theatreland, and control every aspect of their experience to choosing a show to watch.

The consortium realise the need for differentiation. We strongly believe that a truly interactive theatre guide where the customer doesn�t feel as if he / she is dealing with their computer, but rather feeling immersed in an "experience" is the key to success. The fact that the current batch of online theatre guides are just extensions of founded theatre guides presents Switchblade Designs with a chance to enter the window of opportunity and enter into a profitable "niche" market - niche because what we are trying to do has not been done before. The current batch of online theatre guides is more like brochures than any multimedia experience.

Our industry participants can be broken down in to three groups: Customers, Clients (London Borough of Westminster, who own Theatreland and the European Commission), and Advertisers. Customers would visit our site, and use it free of charge.

Advertisers would use our site to "sell" their product, via the use of banners. This would involve us holding their banner image on our site for a fixed monthly rate.

This proposal should make sufficient impact to ensure that after its completion of the proposal we are not simply looking at yet another �Theatre Site�. However, we must make the point that, a large proportion of these sites will have referential information relating to the theatre. Very few of them are likely to give the "Virtual Theatre Tour".

After selecting five theatre sites currently on the Internet at random, the following conclusions have been made both in terms of the content of these sites and the actual design features.

• Key selling point is �why go to the Theatre, when the Theatre can come to you�.
• No substantial content, a couple of lines for each of the shows.

• Market seems to be focus solely on New Jersey, however this is not clear from the web-site.

• Gives information about what�s on where, and brief descriptions of what it is about.
• Information relating to how to get there is also included.
• Who to contact for tickets.
• Pricing information also given.
• Covers a wide variety of topics briefly.
• Provides hyperlinks to other sites for additional information about the production.

• Information is particular to London, and is therefore a strong competitor.

• This site was dedicated to information about a particular show � The Slow Drag.
• The site was built to promote the showing of the musical at the Whitehall theatre in London. The show is no longer performing, but this site has been reviewed, to show the potential of competitors who decide to focus on particular shows.
• There is a great deal of information relating to the musical, the characters and information relating to ticket pricing, how to get there by tubes, busses and information about car-parks. Clearly, quite well thought out. Great attention is played to as to ensure that information is conveyed, without giving away the plot.

• Currently, this show is not currently being performed, but as stated above, this site has been included as an indication of the type of competition that we can expect from sites that are dedicated to single shows.

From the review of these sites it is quite clear that the essence of the virtual theatre has not yet been fully captured. To look into this a little further, we must consider what the Virtual Theatre Experience actually comprises of.

When people go to the theatre they have a mixture of emotions; often these can be described as fear, anticipation, anxiety, and the expectation of not knowing what to expect. Our web-site should attempt to be able to capture these emotions. It needs to be inviting to the user, giving them a sense of actually being there, and not simply reading something that they could pick up from any newsagent in central London. No matter where they are in the world, they should, as a result of coming to our site, feel as though they are standing in the foyer of the Cambridge theatre in Covent Gardens and waiting to see the Grease musical.

We need to capture the essence that will make people want to go further, not knowing what they will expect, yet making it easily navigable, and direct. The achievement of these key ingredients will be our critical success factor.

Market�s are very impersonal things, they do not help the designer figure out who he / she should really aim the potential of the site to. The designers need to know about the real people who will be using their site: who they are, what they like, what are their hobbies, etc. Therefore, we need adequate profiling of our customer base. This is usually achieved by listening to the current customer base, or to send out questionnaires. It is usually best call a market-research firm and ask how we can work together to profile the customers for the site.

After carrying out extensive market research identify our market for our service. We surveyed and gave out questionnaires to people in London and students in around and the London area about their thoughts and ideas of our proposed multimedia production. A high percentage of potential users said that they thought our idea was good and they would use our service when deciding to go to the theatre to find out about what's on and where. Research shows that there is demand for our Virtual Theatre Site.

There are currently many sites on the Internet that provide similar services that Switchblade will offer, however we feel that our proposed production will be successful because of its virtualisation. The various sites that we reviewed all lacked true range of multimedia technology. To make our site unique and interesting we aim to incorporate sound, animation, movement, high quality content and sense of actually being at the theatre.

Market research has allowed us to segment and target our market and determine who our most likely users will be. We have also been able to determine our advertising and promotion techniques.

The most appropriate method of segmenting our market will be according to demographics, which is segmenting the market according to:

• Age - it presumed the majority of our users would be between the ages of 18 to 55.
• Gender - both male and females will be using our service.
• Occupation - the market segment for our product and service will be mainly students, professional people working in computer related jobs, working in offices.
• Family lifestyle - Our service is available to everyone and anyone that has access to the Internet, people that love going to the theatre, living in and around London, tourists, and in the future users who have access to a CD-ROM.
• Social class and income - we are targeting high-income earners and the middle-class.
• As well as the above, event planners, promoters, booking agencies, local press, and people browsing the �net may also find our site useful.

Our target audience in anyone that has access to the Internet and those people that love going to the theatre. The size of our market will be very wide, as the site will be accessible by anyone in the world with access to the Internet. However the main people will be users living in and around London, tourists and students.

We have decided to use a variety of methods to conduct the promotion of our service to ensure that we gain high visibility. A high portion of our users will be made up of Internet users therefore using Internet web page advertisements will be our main form of promotion. This would mean the designing of a web page banner advertisement, which could then be sent to appropriate web sites for inclusion on their site. Such sites could include search engines and sites of other related services. By placing a banner on search engines such as Yahoo, Alta-Vista, Excite, Time Out, MSN Home, AOL Home and Webcrawler to name a few, and by advertising on the online Yellow pages, Theatre On-line hope to capture a great number of people who use the web. The reason for using search engines to advertise is due to the millions of people who use search engines to help them find their way around the web. We can ensure our site banner will be brought up each time a person uses anyone of the search engines to navigate around the web.

We also aim to advertising our site/service by producing leaflets and posters, which can be displayed at tourist information offices, theatres, cinema, libraries, universities etc.

Promotion will also take place in the form of special offers, which will be advertised, on the site. An example of a special offers could be a theatre discounts for users that visit our site. Switchblade Design expect that this will incentive to users using our service will come back on a regular basis.

To become the market leader in this field by providing excellent service through high quality web pages. Assuming the tender is accepted Switchblade Designs can maintain the site by using the latest technologies available. We also aim to monitor competitors site in order to retain a good market share and continue to capture wide range of users.

There are five main phases that we intend to adhere to during the development of the Theatreland on-line. These are:

• Phase 1: Analysis
• Phase 2: Design
• Phase 3: Prototyping
• Phase 4: Development
• Phase 5: Testing & Implementation
• Phase 6: Evaluation & Hand over

The break down�s of each phase is detailed below.

We shall be acting as consultants and liasing with our clients to determine client requirements. This phase will allow us to build a relationship with the client and set out plans for the proposed idea. During this phase, we will be analysing the current market and conducting marketing research into the need for our product.

The Design Phase is the precursor that sets everything up so that the web designers can apply their maximum of potential to the finish product. Various inputs are fed into the production phase so that the designers can get a feel of how the site should be.

The initial starting point would be the storyboarding session. During this session we would immerse ourselves in the culture of the customer: who is the customer, what image do they posses, and asking the questions "If I were a Theatreland web site, what would I look like? What would I say?" During this phase we create plenty of sketches, thumbnails of images, and any designs which would seem appropriate. As soon as the first set of designs has been agreed upon by the team and been approved by the client.

Many site designers do get carried away with creating cute icons used for navigation, and do end up spending a lot of time creating and coding them. However, we will try to keep the navigation simple for the user to flow around the site. During the alpha stage we would create the entire site in a text-based format, and then from there decide the necessary structure to be used for the navigational scheme.

The alpha version of the site will be in the form of a prototype. This is where all our ideas from our design phase are developed. This prototype shall be the proof of concept, and not the full version of our final product. It shall be the basis for the client to see the concept of our plans and ideas.

After the client is happy with the proof of concept, development of the full working product is now worked on. This phase only happens if the prototyping phase goes well, and is all about putting the finishing touches and developing the full version of the site. The details that will need attention are:

• File and page-name fixes
• Spelling fixes
• Make more banners / /headers
• Add latest content to all sections
• Get CGI scripts running
• Update links
• Add Meta tags
• Ensure all images are tagged with dimensions, conform to project colour and image, and that the specs have "ALT" tags
• Add copyright and legal disclaimers
• Use bold and italic consistently
• Specify default background colours and fonts.

On completion of the developed product, the site shall go through a period of extensive testing. At this stage we shall test the product across all platforms for complete functionality. Once both the client and we are satisfied that the product conforms to quality and to the requirements the next stage is to implement our site and go live.

This is the final stage of the development and is where we shall document all the previous phases and hand over to the client our final report.

The Switchblade consortium for this project consists of four experienced, skilled personnel. All members are experienced in Information Systems, multimedia and have project management skills. The team has previously worked successfully on several other projects and forms this consortium for the Theatreland project. Below are how the team is organized and a brief description of their skills and experience.

Nilesh has managed numerous projects over the last 8 years, has specialised skills and experience in Business and Project Management. Has held various executive positions throughout his career and had many years� of world-wide project expertise with the Microsoft Corporation where he was responsible for Commercial Technology Development, Publishing and Multimedia activities and Information Strategy.

Have excellent project management skills and a good team motivator. Has brilliant organisational skills and is able to get the best out of those that work with him. Effective time management and prioritisation of tasks is his key feature in achieving exceptional standards

Nilesh Parmar now has aspirations of promoting switchblade into the multinational arena.

IT, Financing, Risk Analysis, Design Management, Human Computer Interaction, Web Database Management, Company Strategy Analysis.

Mr Nurmohamed has been a consultant primarily concerned with the financial aspects of Internet based firms. His approach is to investigate the introduction of new technologies within the field of IT in particular those relating to the Internet. It is within this role that he has been able to investigate the probable impact of these technologies, both in terms of financial constraints as well as those pertaining to the technological benefits, for many of the industries largest company�s. His input has also been very much required in the financial accounts of these firms. Along with dealing with financial considerations, he has also been at the forefront of looking at both back and front end processing issues concerned with the Internet. Furthermore, his vast research background makes him a perfect candidate for roles that require taking into account current social, demographic and technological trends in the market, and providing these insights into design issues relating to the interaction between end users and the final product. Perhaps, his greatest strength is looking into the corporate strategy within firms, and making decisions on the best course of action to enable stability and to provide a basis for a more forward thinking operation.

Previously worked for Coopers & Lybrand and then for PricewaterhouseCoopers, within each of the above-mentioned fields individually. Also worked as a corporate strategy analyst for British Airways, and as a design manager for a leading international magazine. All in all, a useful person to have on board, as he adds an additional dimension, through divergence thinking, to what can often become a �single track� thinking design team.

Reena Shah has graduated from Kingston University with BSc (Hon's) degree in Information Systems Design and a MSc in IT and Marketing. Reena has spent 3 years working for British Airways in the Im Marketing Department. At BA she has spent much of her time creating and maintaining BA's Web sites for both Internet and Intranet exposure. She has an in depth understanding of development of Web pages with the use of HTML and is also able to implement increased functionality and interactivity on the pages designed through the use of Dynamic HTML, JavaScript, Macromedia Flash and VRML. Prior to joining BA Reena worked in the retail industry as the marketing manager for Debenhams where she was responsible for the marketing strategy for Women's Wear.

Reena is highly motivated and enthusiastic individual with a great ambition to succeed in anything she does. She has excellent design and information technology skills and is well aware of the different marketing strategies and how a business operates. Reena has also managed various projects and has excellent organisational and project management skills.

A keen interest of the Internet has led me to concentrate on learning all available Internet-based technologies. These include:

• HTML
• DHTML
• XML
• Flash 3
• ASP
• CGI
• Java
• JavaScript
• PhotoShop 5
• Corel Xara Webster
• Corel Draw 8
• PageMaker 6.5
• Illustrator 7
  

The Internet, in essence, is another form of publication (albeit one which has a greater level of user interactivity). This basic ideology has led me to develop my skills in several key design areas. As well of extensive knowledge of the major industry leading packages (listed above), I have managed to "condition" myself towards creating highly visual, yet innovative web-sites � be they for an Intranet or the Internet. I have moved from creating and designing web-sites, which look like a high school student created them towards a more professional level. I like to feel that over the past few years I have managed to hone my design skills towards a highly creative state.

I managed to truly hone my skills as a result of spending time working on initial designs for my own personal web page. However, as time went on, my skill level rose to a level such that my cousin (who owns his own internet-based company) hired me to work on several of his projects for his clients. This allowed me to work with real clients for the first time. Initially, this was quite a daunting experience. However, under the direct tutelage of my cousin, I was able to successfully implement creative web-sites for his client. I never worked alone, as this would have been quite a risk for my cousin to take: I would always work within a team. I started out as an assistant, but over time started to create and design storyboards and web-sites on my own as a team member in my own right.

During the course of my industrial placement year, my department at British Airways put forth a plan to implement an Intranet site as a means of advertising their products to a wider audience. I immediately jumped at the chance to steer-head the entire project. These involved not only creating and designing the site, but to also manage the project myself. This meant holding various meeting with department members to find out what they would like the site to do, as well as finding out every service that the department hoped to offer. By the end of the project, I had managed to create a successful branding strategy for the department, using the Intranet as the ideal medium to sell their product. The department had already several brand names for some of their core products, but I was able to develop a much more visual branding strategy, rather than the then-used brand name strategy.

My main role within this team would be the web master. This would mean consulting with the team about design issues and the structure of the site amongst other issues. However, my past experience leads me to believe that I would also be instrumental in creating a suitable market plan as to how we would be able to "sell" the product as effectively as possible. I would be able to create a suitable branding strategy that would be productive.

The Theatreland On-line project is the responsibility of the 4 members of SwitchBlade Designs.

The project has been broken down into various phases as mentioned earlier. Below is an outline of how long each phase will take to complete.

Phase 1: Analysis 10 Man Days*

Phase 2: Design 12 Man Days

Phase 3: Prototyping 14 Man Days

Phase 4: Development 21 Man Days

Phase 5: Testing 9 Man Days

Phase 6: Documentation 5 Man Days

Total 71 Man Days (13 weeks)

• Man Days are defined as working: 7 hours a day, based on a 5 day week (Mon � Fri).

In order to achieve the targets of this project careful project management and planning is required making sure that every part of the deliverable is completed and to a high standard. The Switchblade team have various skills and expertise within this project and the work involved in this project been broken down into smaller manageable tasks and careful planning for when each of these deliverables should be completed can be shown below.

The consortium members have jointly discussed each section as a team and the breakdown below shows who has been responsible for documenting each task.

The above breakdown of tasks is how we as a group have separated our tasks to produce the deliverable:

• Draft Project Proposal
  

The tasks for the project proposal have been allocated according to the team member�s relevant skills. However, each member the group review whether the tasks have been completed correctly and meet the requirements of the project has completed once the tasks. The project manager chairs this process of control with input from the rest of the team.

Once this draft has been approved it shall be revised as necessary before and the next deliverables are developed:

• Revised Project Proposal
• Prototype and Final Report
• Review and Project Evaluation

The following is a plan of how the rest of the project shall be developed, showing the milestones of the project and dates by when things should be completed.

We must make the distinction of what we mean by pricing, whether it is in terms of the pricing that could be associated with generating revenues from the final delivered product, or whether we determine pricing to be our charge for developing this product.

Our proposal is two tiered; firstly we will charge a price for the producing the proposed product, and secondly to maintain it. Our financial plan shows preliminary investigations into both of these, and gives an approximation of what we would expect our final figures to be.

Clearly, this proposal outlines that in terms of the final product, we do foresee any key areas from which there is the potential to generate any kind of revenues. (Although the inherent possibility to advertise � via our proposed web site, is vast) and of course, the decision for revenues to be generated from this proposal is down to the discretion of the European commission, whether they decide to keep us on for site maintenance.

Our initial price for developing this product is based on a simple cost-plus pricing method, which will disclose after further investigation into our financial plan. All the financial information relating to this proposal is clearly outlined in the financial plan that will follow.

� ECU

Phase 1: Analysis 10 Man Days* 3,000 4,260

Phase 2: Design 12 Man Days 3,600 5,112

Phase 3: Prototyping 14 Man Days 4,200 5,964

Phase 4: Development 21 Man Days 6,300 8,946

Phase 5: Testing 9 Man Days 2,700 3,834

Phase 6: Documentation 5 Man Days 1,500 2,130

21, 300 30,246

• *Man Days are defined as working: 7 hours a day, based on a 5 day week (Mon � Fri).
• Calculations based on �75 per person per day. (4 people working per day).
• �1 equivalent to 1.42 ECU's (current rate at time of calculations.)

Other Costs:

Consumables:

Stationary 100 142

Printing 200 284

Telephone 250 355

Media 250 355

1. 1,136

Travel, acc. etc)

TOTAL COSTS �22,700 ECU 32,368

There are various factors that make a project a success and good project management is always one of them. The members within our consortium have had good exposure of project management within the various projects and careers that each individual has been involved in.

As with previous projects, this project shall not focus on any one particular methodology for project management. Throughout our team there is expert knowledge and specialist skills in applying various techniques such as SSADM, Prince2, DSDM and Soft systems analysis. No project uses only one specific methodology from start to finish so we shall be using elements of all the above where we feel appropriate and also we have benefited from using parts of different methodologies successfully in previous projects.

Our consortium consists of 4 members all of whom have a specialist qualifications and knowledge, outlined in our project team roles section of this report. All members shall be responsible for management this project but overall project management shall be the responsibility of the project manager, who shall be responsible for the day to day running and ensuring the project is delivered on time, to cost and required scope and quality.

We have agreed to have a formal weekly meeting as a group to discuss the project and evaluate what each members has produced and go through as a group what should be done or if any changes are to be made to reports. If the team feel it is necessary to discuss or bring up any related issues within the week we arrange to meet up before the weekly meeting to discuss the issues. Minutes are taken at all meetings and are documented with each report handed in.

The Switchblade Consortium has a specialist Financial Director that looks after all financial aspects of projects and controls all the incoming and outgoing to the consortium and makes sure that our accounts are kept under control.

As with all Switchblade projects client payments are required at various stages throughout the project broken down as follows:

• 10% of cost after the Analysis phase.

• 30% on development of prototype.

• 60% on completion and Hand over.

Communication is the key to the success of our proposal. We have been issued with the brief of a potential for market exploitation within the Internet, relating to Theatre. We must ensure that at all times we are in keeping with the overall objectives of the client and that we conforming to their requirements. Our communication with the client will be on going, and we have a strong reputation for in building strong relationships with our clients. They will be consulted at constant intervals throughout the design and development processes. The passing of information between as and the client will be as follows:

E-mail: - The transfer of electronic mail will be a vital role in our communication, e-mail will allow for information to be sent from us to the client rapidly, and since it is considered to be the �virtual piece of paper�, we feel the transfer of electronic information to be the equivalent to the transfer of information via the postal service.

Meetings: - Of course our clients will have other issues to deal with aside from this proposal and of course their time along with ours costs money. Meetings will be held when the proposal reaches critical stages, where directional input is required and / or to review current progress. We shall consider setting a few milestones, where the client will be briefed on current progress.

We can see the great importance that we place on the transfer of electronic mail, the justification for its use is, that it is quick and reliable. Since our proposal is looking at an Internet solution for a market, (We must of course remember that the Internet is a highly volatile area to break into, a potential market one-day may cease to exist the following day.) �Time is of the essence�, Therefore, we need to work quickly.

The monitoring of progress for the project is looked after by the project manager who ensures that the project is running smoothly, according to plan and client requirements.

As a consortium we have regular meetings to discuss the development of the various stages. All these meetings have full minutes documented and can be found in the appendix of this report.

The format for all reports that are documented are as follows:

Font Style: Times New Roman

Font Size: 12

Spacing: Single

Paper: A4

Main Headings: Heading 1

Sub Headings: Heading 2

All documents to be created in Microsoft Word 7.0 format.

On completion of all projects, Switchblade will document the entire project in the form of a Final Project Report to be handed to the client and shall also be available electronically on our web site.