• I looked at the map and looked for locations that were close to each other
• I looked for main roads and tried to avoid going through the centre of London (dark shaded area) as it is more congested
• When solving it I left some of the difficult locations (such as Canterbury and Ipswich) until last
• When creating routes involving many locations that are nearby, I had no instances of "no stop". For longer distances or paths far apart, I limited the number of stops to 3 out of a possible 5.
• I started off by setting all the departure times at 6 AM to ensure that each route could make it there if we set off as early as possible (I considered anything before 6 to be unreasonable to ask of the drivers).
• If the route got there early, I'd then adjust the start time until the arrival time was between 11:50 and 12:00. 

My most successful parts of the project were my main form that provided a easy to navigate interface that links to most aspects of the project and possibly my instructions too, as they were in-depth but not overly difficult.

I could have done better with ensuring that everything was linked into my main form rather than having to use access' navigation for a few features. I had many issues with getting my original design implimented due to the limitations of Access and similarily I had some issues with navigation buttons as Access' overall image support (especially image transparency for non-square buttons) seem rather poor. As such I had to find work-arounds for such issues that allowed me to go beyond the annoying limitations and still include some elements of my design ideas.

The main changes I made were to the layout and how I grouped forms, using a main form to show basic information from all the countries that can be navigated with buttons to cycle through the countries and then have several froms that give more in-depth detail on each statistic whilst my original design was based on individual forms more like my latter forms with no linking and their design being more horizontal than vertical as well as included additional info and graphs.
Button designs have also changed to a more rounded, Mac-like style an I chose a lue colour scheme to replace the previous idea that was a lot more dull and grey.

I have completed the majority of the project, excluding a few elements I have cut from the project and those that have changed since initial plans.  As mentioned before my original design incoporating graphs has been abandoned, however I have since found a way to include them in seperate forms which go into further detail about a certain statistic.

I have also fixed an error in Access regarding the lack of the "pointing hand" which we expect to see when hovering over links or buttons using a module in Visual Basic. I have also expanded upon the printing capabilities by offering the user the choice of printer to print from with my print buttons, something Access' built-in features don't provide in button form. To help explain the print box that results (and the rather cryptic message if you cancel) I added custom dialog boxes that inform the user.

I'm now mostly satisfied with layout and design, although I'm aware that there is a noticable lack of instructions. Enough basic queries have been setup, but there is currently no way of using these entirely from the main form, meaning some actions must rely on Access' interface rather than my own. Hopefully the interface should be intuitive enough for most end users to easily navigate and the intro on the main form should explain the purpose of the database to them. Extensive testing phase is still required and I am uncertain of intergrating possible instructions into the database for ease of use or keeping them seperate so as to not overcomplicate the layout. The format used is also up to debate. Instructions and manuals tend to be in .pdf, but .doc may be more appropiate, especially considering that to use this project the user will already have MS office. Finally, rich/plain text is a universal format that tends to be supported across all devices and requires little space.

I have started to move away considerably from my initial plan which involved forms for each statistic per country with graphs included. As it currently stands there is a "main" form whihc includes all information concerning a country on one page, using clear buttons to navigate through the countries and several seperate forms which include all countries on one page but only show one environemntal statistic per from. I intend on finding a way of linking this all together. Queries are still in their infancy, with only two examples (a "search" and a "sort")

During today's Testing Session the user commented on a few positives and negatives concerning the current state of the project:

+ Good layout and use of space

+ Detailed information

+ Easy to use; very clear

-  Better-named forms for end version to avoid user confusion (e.g. "values_old" is no good for non-developers)

-  Add report or something similar to explain environemental langauge and the purpose of the project

Thus I should continue my designs as they are and keep most things constant about the project but aspects such as naming and linking to info/explainations need improvement.

My ideas are currently at a constant changing state as I see what does and does not work as well as whether one of my concepts is too difficult to implement or doesn't function the way I wish. The layout has changed to a more simple and easy to edit/create one. I still intend on trying to implement addition features such as a more advanced query system, the possibility or rankings and maybe even charts.

So far I've got the basic form setup and some basic queries and of course, the data has benn compiled into a table used by the form. After much hardship I was able to insert my own buttons to replace Access' horrible grey buttons and find a workaround for Access' lack of image transparency support, leaving images with white or black background; which rally damages the design aspect of it. The system should look professional and somewhat pleasing to the eye.

Looking back on my initial plan there is a large possibility that I will not be able to finish my query system or graphs within January and that it will likely eat into some of February. However, I doubt that the tweaks to what already exist and writing instructions will take as long as I originally predicted, so the time should balance out in the coming months.

Download link http://www.python.org/download/ (I advise 2.6.4)
Site that has links to several tutorials
Site I used when learning basics
Good for explaining programming and python (using food recipes as a metaphor)
Introduction to making programs with a GUI using the Tkinter module in python

So far I have created a basic GUI and created all of the graphics needed for my project. The template for the "infoviewer" has been completed and merely needs some more information about Entertainment put into it. The games windows and video player aspects are essentially complete and may need refining a bit. A very basic outline for the mp3 player section has been created but it still needs to have a way of switching between songs and be easier to use.

So in summary I still need to include some information in the InfoViewer, there are some minor tweaks to the games section that need to be done, the movie player needs a bit of work in making it more alike the games section and the mp3 player needs a good bit more work to build it up.

Week 1: Complete linking of InfoViewer, incorporate into main project and input information.
Week 2: Finish off any last parts of InfoViewer, build folder for music player, add to video player
Week 3: Add final touches, mostly on mp3 and video players.

Tasks:
Linking of InfoViewer
Add into main project
Replace dummy text in InfoViewer
Reshape Games Folder
Build folder for music player
Reshape Music Folder
Rebuild E-mp3
Folder/Program special effects/transitions/cursors
Add to video player Task cancelled
Polish/bugfix Some bugs can't be fixed

I believe that making my project interesting, more enjoyable to use and making it unique were very successful apsects of this coursewok. Whilst the interactivity was stripped down a great deal from my early ideas, I still believe it got the job done in the end.

I am, however, disappointed in that only a fraction of what I had planned made into the final project. This was no doubt due to managing issues, with me setting myself perhaps unrealistic targets that couldn't be met in the timespan. Besides that I do think that my management of time with this project was mostly effective as the majority of the time spent on this project was spent well. The main issues that cut away at my time were software-related and were due to me trying to bypass the limitations of the programs.