To design a software model that serves the needs of the users, the car dealership example is translated into:

• Who are the users?
  
• What tasks do they perform?

In this example, the salesperson is the user. The user's tasks can include:

• Determining what a customer wants, needs, and can afford
  
• Determining what cars are in stock that match the customer's wants, needs, and budget
  
• Negotiating an agreement using a worksheet
  
• Getting approval from the sales manager
  
• Giving the worksheet information to the finance manager.

From this analysis, the objects that should be part of our software model can be identified. These include a car object, car lot object, customer object, customer list object, worksheet object, worksheet list object, salesperson object, sales manager object, and finance manager object.

To simplify this explanation, consider the car object only. Each car object represents a real car for sale in the car lot. A car object contains descriptive information about the corresponding real car, such as its year, make, model, price, factory-installed options, color, and vehicle identification number. Because the primary purpose of a car object is to convey information, the car object is a data object.