Secure Voting System
Capabilities Statement
Third year Bachelor of Information Technology student with an impeccable work ethic and ability to learn and adapt to the constantly changing technology environment. Project experience in web, applications, security, troubleshooting and minor software development, combined with close to two years valued experience in sales and assistance. Demonstrated superb customer service capabilities, alongside the ability to develop and maintain strong working relationships. Excellent interpersonal, phone, and digital communication skills, to partner with my professional demeanor.
Introduction
The goal of our capstone project was to develop a secure online voting system that gives users valuable transparency into the repudiation of our elections without compromising the privacy, integrity or validity of their results. The finished product we have worked on throughout the course of the year features an interactive web application that users can use on any of their own internet connected devices to successfully login, cast and upon an appropriate time, view the results of an election. The backbone of the finished web application relies on our implemented block-chain technology, which integrated the open source application Multi-chain. Our secure website processes the authentication of users to ensure every real world identity only gets to vote once. The application's two-factor authentication for the system resides within a proposed integration with myGov's login system alongside physical user registration to maximize legitimacy and integrity of voters. The design of our server architecture within our system additionally is mirrored and hosted on multiple servers to allow for proper load balancing to handle the required bandwidth.
Assertion
Throughout the year, my roles and contributions to the projected varied drastically, due to varying needs of meeting our project requirements. My overall project contributions can be broken down into the two half's of the project, taking the form of both development/programming contributions, and UI/UX contributions to the project. Additionally, contributions to group documents and showcase preparation were made, to ensure we were prepared for all aspects of the project.
Developer contributions:
Throughout the first half of the project, due to general lack of developer roles within our team, I adopted the lead developer role alongside my UI responsibilities, making me primarily responsible for the overall functionality of the login/registration system. Contributions made throughout this process revolved around the core implementation of login and register screens, initial dummy content screens with voting instructions, voting functionality implementations, and user validation/encryption during the login/registration process.
The above highlights my primary focal point for the first half of the project, as I was responsible (partnered with one of our security developers), to implement a login system that successfully authenticated users upon login, but also secured their data when storing it within our database systems for voting integrity purposes. I took it upon myself to expand my JavaScript knowledge and skill-set by learning the fundamentals of data encryption, hashing and salting, which I partnered with my prior experience of data validation to implement the primary structure of our authentication system (which has been expanded further by new development team members). To expand upon this contribution, positive team feed-back and my timely contributions are evidenced throughout our Slack communication channels, DropBox folders and weekly Discord in which we frequently discusses progress made on a week-to-week basis. Additionally, supervisor feedback (during trimester 1 of the project) regarding my overall login system as given during our demo presentation concluding the trimester, in which they praised what I managed to create, but also pin-pointed some urgent implementations which as a team we have successfully implemented.
As an additional source of my contributions, here are a few snippets of code that I implemented throughout this development process:
For the second half of the project, the only other major development contribution I made was in relation to sourcing and helping implement the functionality of flipClock.js (and open-source .js library for implementing a flip countdown-timer, which we intended to use for a countdown when results will be displayed). Team and client feedback again is a major assertion point for this development contribution, as the positive reactions and responses from team members, supervisors and clients are what has indicated that the implementation has been a successful one, bringing a lot more life to the web-page, as the implementation of a countdown timer is bound to bring a bit more excitement and general appeal to our showcase. For this implementation, my core responsibility was setting up the frame-work for the library, of which other developers built off of, personalizing it to our needs.
As an additional source of my contributions, here is a snippet of code that I implemented throughout this development process
UI/UX contributions:
My primary role and responsibility throughout the course of the project was to maintain and frequently update when necessary every stylistic aspect of the project to ensure it was presented in a suitable, professional and realistic manner. Throughout the year, these contributions took the form of the following:
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Developing several version of our website background, using Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop
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Adjusting CSS elements regarding headings, forms, animations, colors and fonts
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Allowing for content resize for varying device uses (mobile, tablet, pc etc.)
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Assisting in designing a suitable logo to represent the application
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Demo-testing the application with members of the public, to gain some insight on areas that need improvement or adjustments
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Wire-framing initial planned version of the product
A consistent contribution made throughout the development process would be in relation to my hand-crafted website background, which went through an endless amount of changes and adjustments to reach a desired color-balance and overall 'feel' for the mood of the website. After various renditions of over-complicated designed, I came to the realization that simplicity was the key for this aspect of the design process, as prior demo-tests indicated that earlier renditions of the background were too distracting (for the core use of the site), indicating that a simplified, yet professional approach had to be taken. Again, team feedback and client feedback (alongside my .psd files) are the primary source of this contribution, as ultimately they were the ones who deemed the designed background to be suitable, and were very pleased with the final result.
As evidenced in previous screenshots, I played a major hand in the overall UI of the site as well, aiding in the process of overall display of the content, screen transition and overall layout of objects. This contributions primarily took the form of CSS style-sheets and JavaScript functions which handled specific animations/events. Primary evidence of this assertion takes the form of my timely contributions made to our Dropbox files, alongside team feedback gathered from weekly team meetings, and additional client feedback gathered from demo presentations.
As an additional source of my contributions, here is a screenshot of some of the UI I assisted in implementing for our site
As an additional source of my contributions, here is a screenshot of content re-adjusting for mobile screen size (scroll-able view)
Document/Showcase contributions:
A final assertion for contributions I had throughout the entirety of the project resides within my frequent contributions to required documentation, reports and general preparation for the final showcase of our project. Every aspect of our reports I took part in, primarily due to the fact that I was the only team member who could report on UI/UX contributions, progress and planned implementations (as I was the only UI/UX developer for the team). Additionally, for the first half of the project, as I was the development lead, i too adopted the responsibility of reporting on these aspects as well where I could, as we were lacking development contributions in reports and documents. Evidence for these assertions primarily are evident within all of our document submissions, alongside team feedback received during meetings and general slack conversations.
In regards to our showcase, outside of the actual development of the site, contributions were needing to be made regarding the overall preparation for the event, of which I happily adapted some responsibility for. My primary contributions for this, took the form of assisting in preparing a script (speech) to present to those who approached our booth, to ensure we presented ourselves in an appropriate and professional manner, and explained each aspect of the project in significant and understandable detail. On top of this, contributing to our slide reel, which detailed how each aspect of the site functioned was another assertion I took part in (which again can be evidenced via team feedback and communication streams, alongside the slide reel itself). A final aspect I took responsibility for, in perpetration for the showcase was preparing customization mock-up letters which would be presented to users detailing their login details in preparation for voting (image below). Again, evidence of this assertion is evident via our communication streams and overall team/client feedback, alongside the physical letter's them self; present during the showcase.
Another implementation I took responsibility for throughout the project was creating and maintaining the Trello page for the tea, in which I asked teams to update each page assigned to their team, to ensure we were always up to date with everything that had been contributed to the site, and also could take a note of if people were actually contributing to their assigned portions of the project. Evidence of this assertion can be sign via the actual board itself, or via all communication streams across the project team (team feedback).
Summary
In summary, my contributions for the project have entirely revolved around the responsibilities of a UI/UX Designer and Programmer role, as I have implemented a vast amount of functionalities detailing both design and overall website development. I took part in implementing the initial login/register functionality with encryption implementations. On top of this, I assisted in implementing our flip-clock that displays a count-down timer for our voting results. In regards to stylistic contributions, I initially built the entire skeletal framework of the site, which has been built off ever since. I created our background graphic, implemented CSS and assisted in implementing animations, and enabled content-resizing for various screen-sizes. On top of this, I assisted in logo creation for the project, and sourced demo-testers for feedback on various versions of the project. Outside of my role contributions, I actively took par tin all project meetings, discussions, queries, documents and showcase preparation, to ensure we could successfully meet our desired outcome for the project. Overall, I feel I was a vital part of the team's success in achieving our project outcome of designing a secure voting system for Australian Voters, as I can confidentially say I effectively contributed to every aspect of the project that I could. Personally, I believe that without my contributions, the state of the project wouldn't be anywhere near as polished and presentable as it is, as I feel I had a pivotal role in the overall success of the project regarding the stylistic nature and core functionality of majority of the web-application, meeting our specific team, project and stakeholder requirements. That being said, without the contributions of each of our security developers, analysts and newly introduced developers for the second half of the project, our project's finished state would be drastically lessened. Our team coordination, effort and passion is what lead us to our final polished product, and is the primary reason as to why we finalized a successful result.
