Emmanuel Olatunji

│ Project

Summary: Information Systems 3 Solution Design Project, University of the Witwatersrand

Duration: 8 months

Role: Product Designer, Group Lead

│ Context

In my third year Information Systems module at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, we were assigned to project teams that would find an organisation to partner with in order to develop a system that would solve a real-world problem they were facing.

My group's partner organisation, The African Union for Housing Finance (AUHF), is a member-based association of housing co-operations, building societies, mortgage banks, and other organisations aimed at promoting housing finance on the African continent. Members pay annual fees relative to their company size and gain benefits such as information collection and dissemination, advocacy and lobbying, capacity building, networking, and training events.

│ Problem

After extensive virtual dialogue and a comprehensive face-to-face meeting, we identified three central problems facing the AUHF that a system could be built to address.

1. All correspondence between members and staff is conducted via email.

2. Payments are tracked and recorded manually.

3. Members, Events, and Reports are all handled manually by different AUHF staff.

│ Process

Tools: Visual Studio, Adobe XD, Miro, Power BI, .NET Core

Process:

• Initial research – defining problem

• Initial analysis – ideating solution

• Project pitch with AUHF admin team

• Data handoff from AUHF

• System design

◦ Lo-fi prototypes designed using Miro

◦ Hi-fi prototypes designed using XD

◦ Reports designed using Miro

• System development

◦ Frontend developed in Visual Studio using XD prototype for reference

◦ Reports developed in Power BI using Miro wireframes for reference

◦ Database and backend developed in Visual Studio with .NET Core

Shown below: Slide extracts from the project pitch deck.

│ Final Product

Solution: Web platform with locally hosted database

Conclusion: Our analysis found that the AUHF was making considerable financial losses in unclaimed membership fees (exacerbated by poor reporting). Additionally, the association was losing leads due to disorganised communication that partly stemmed from a high employee turnover.

To mitigate these problems, Afrihost was built to help AUHF staff and members communicate and manage their accounts. The platform automated several key business processes such as payments, membership approvals, account management, and event organisation. The admin team was very excited to use Afrihost after our final presentation. They eventually implemented a very similar system after we handed over everything we developed (the project was Witwatersrand University IP).

My team was able to implement a full, locally hosted version of the Afrihost platform in just over two months and finished the project ranked third out of 15 project teams on our class leader board.

Shown below: Several extracts from Afrihost's admin interface with captions explaining each screen.