Undergraduate Projects

Heurist Platform

The Heurist Platform is a web application, which provides the tools for researchers in Humanities to generate their own, user driven, databases, storing records and data relevant to their research. The crosstabs function is an element of the Heurist system, providing users with the ability to select multiple variables, they wish to analyse. This function should allow users to be able to generate meaningful analysis of their results, with the ability to customise some aspects of the table. Prior to the PA2114 team’s project initiation, the crosstabs function was incomplete and provided the user with the foundational functionality to complete their analysis, i.e. generate table results, using primitive elements. Some issues included lack of colour and readability of table results and user interface and functionality that simply did not, i.e. save and add, edit and delete variable values. Some aspects of the crosstabs function were missing and required extensive work to ensure proper functionality.

Solution Description

The solution required the PX team to reconstruct and improve on the existing crosstabs function within the Heurist Platform. The solution incorporated various changes and restructuring of the user interface (UI) and additional features and functions to support the overall crosstabs function, i.e. customising and editing values and improvements to the existing save functionality. The crosstabs UI incorporates the use of the existing brand of Heurist, readability for users and generates affordance in the user experience. The extended functionality generated by the PX team allows users the ability to customise their table results to suit their research needs. The PX team was able to reconstruct how the user customises the values specific to a variable, using a modal and adding, editing and deleting groups of values. The PX team was able to implement the ability to export results, customise table title and save changes made to variable values. Overall, this solution would pose a useful tool for various Humanities researchers, such as Simon (client).

Technologies Used

  • The following development languages were used: HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript (utilising jQuery).
  • The following open-source software were used: Datatables, chart.js and Bootstrap v5.0

Developed By:
Frank Canturi
Anthony Kontrafouris
Zahrah Khan