Health Club Observation

Observation is required to gather information for the new system in One Pacific Health Club. By doing so, information can be obtained to build the new system to suit the needs of the club. Without doing so, the new system might not be able to function according to the needs, hence leading to project failure or other forms of failures. By observation method, the team is able to observe the staffs of One Pacific Health Club without their willingness or the ability to provide requested information while other methods such as interview may have lack of input from the staffs.

The observation technique in information gathering can be obtained by firstly observing the processing cycle of the present system in One Pacific Health Club. This can be done

• Does not rely on staff or people’s willingness or ability to provide information.

• Allows the observers to directly see what people or the staffs do rather than relying on what staffs or people say they did.

Disadvantages of observation

• Susceptible to observer bias. Can be reduced by having more observers to give an average result.

• Susceptible to the “Hawthorne effect,” which means people performing better when they know they are being observed, although indirect observation may decrease the effect.

• It can be expensive and time-consuming to be conducted compared to other information gathering methods.

• Does not increase the understanding of why people behave as they do.

b) Conduct of the investigation method (target user, location, carrying out)

Firstly, there is a need to have an ethical manner by keeping One Pacific Health Club staffs, which is the targeted users of the new system, informed about the presence of the participant observers and their purpose which is to observe and document the activity of the staffs. The researchers will also share sufficient information with the staffs about the research topic. Another ethical responsibility is to preserve the anonymity of the participants in the final write up and field notes to prevent their identification. Individual identities must be described in ways that community members will not be able to identify the