About autoexport

Auto Export Shield is a service that alerts car dealers to potential exporters attempting to purchase cars for export. With Auto Export Shield, the dealership's management and staff have access to a simple, comprehensive, real time database that helps protect them from potencial fraud and scams from unscrupulous exporters.

The export of automobiles has exploded over the past three years with the decline in worldwide automotive production and weak American dollar. Exporters are now targeting luxury brand dealerships across the country and are continuously changing their tactics to ensure a steady supply of cars. Experts agree that the number of luxury cars purchased for export will continue to grow throughout 2010 and into 2011, making every dealership a target of fraud and scams.

Planning and Prototyping

After the initial interview with the Auto Export Shied Team, we gathered all the information required to begin the design phase of the application. We started off with the Database design, ensuring that it it was flexible and allowed for future additions to the AES feature set. Shortly after, our team in charge of the backend implementation began the information design, focusing on the ease of use for new and inexperienced users into the system. The goal was to make the system as user friendly as possible while still offering all the functionality needed.

Design

For the graphic design we chose a color palette that included color tones available in the logo. The layout is clean and is designed to help the user find all the infromation he or she is searching for quickly. Everything was coded using open web standards to ensure maxium accesibility.

Technology

There was a combination of technologies used for this project. For the server we used the Apache server on a Linux box. We code using a proprietary PHP framework and mysql database. We manage our projects using GIT, the fast version control system created by Linux Torvalds (linux creator). The entire website is also coded using open web standards, and we have optimized our code to work with older browsers too.