88-272 Course Project

Home

88-272

88-275

88-344

88-348

Toolset

Prof. H

Home
-272 Pages
--272 Docs
---Project

Case Description

Budding entrepreneurs Alex and Mark Heimann have decided to cash in on the current e-commerce bonanza by extending their current bakery services to on-line customers. Their bakery shop, Bread Express, is located north of Pittsburgh, PA with convenient access to the Pittsburgh airport for shipping purposes.   Bread Express currently offers a wide variety of breads, rolls, cookies, muffins, and other specialty items. A complete menu of their offerings can be found at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/882-272/menu.html.

Preliminary discussions with the Heimann brothers indicate the need, at a minimum, for the following capabilities from their web based system:

• Show potential customers the different product offerings and prices;
• Allow customers to place orders for products on-line via credit card;
• Confirm an order when it's placed;
• Allow customers to contact a customer service representative electronically;
• Prepare daily lists of products to be baked for on-line customers;
• View details of customer accounts;
• Produce a bill for customers when their order to complete;
• Produce meaningful production and revenue reports;
• Enter and modify menu items, availability, and pricing, as well as daily specials.

Information about products, prices, specials, customers, and so on must be maintained in a database so that the necessary bills and reports can be generated. Using a database to maintain this information will hopefully enable future enhancements and improvements to the system.

While Alex and Mark are connoisseurs of bread, they recognize that they currently lack the technical expertise to create this on-line bakery site. To remedy this problem, they have hired web application development teams from IDS Associates (a.k.a. 88-272) to help them in this process. Fortunately, all teams have a set of use cases for an on-line ordering system (in Applying Use Cases by Schneider & Winters) which can be adapted to the on-line bakery project and guide them as they work on their tasks. The Heimann brothers are employing approximately 25 teams from IDS Associates to work on three phases of this project. Teams will compete to generate the best designs/prototypes and the teams that develop the best designs/prototypes will be awarded appropriately.

Phase 1: User Interface Design
Due on October 8, 1999

In this first project, each team will create the GUI interfaces that  Bread Express will need to use their system effectively. Interfaces need to be designed for customer functions (such as viewing the menu, ordering) as well as administrative functions to be handled by  Bread Express employees. In the process of developing this web interface, please be sure to follow these steps:

1. Prepare an object-action table of all user objects.
2. If appropriate, choose a metaphor for your GUI design.
3. Create and document a high-level design which:
   • Identifies main windows and related actions;
   • Identifies home bases and launching pads;
   • Identifies how users access main windows;
   • Assigns user actions for main windows.
4. Based on this work, create a prototype of this design and provide all relevant documentation. Prototype construction should be in HTML and include any JavaScript necessary to verify form information.

Phase 2: Database Creation
Due on November 8, 1999

In this phase of the project, each team will create a database which contains information on:

1. regular and special menu offerings, prices, availability;
2. relevant customer information;
3. current customer orders;
4. daily order history (to later assess ordering patterns);
5. revenues;
6. any other information necessary to fulfill system requirements.

All databases will be created using Microsoft Access. Teams are expected to add some fictitious customer and order information in order to demonstrate database functionality.

Phase 3: Accessing the Database on the Web
Due on December 3, 1999

In this final phase of the project, each team will link the Bread Express's new database with the GUI developed in Phase 1 via the web. Accessing the bakery's web site (to be hosted on IDS servers for the time being), customers should be able to fulfill the objectives listed above and bakery administrators should be able to access information in the database as well as modify any information in real-time as needed. Additional requirements/site functionality for this final stage may be announced later in the semester.

Note on Team Assignments: All team assignments for this project will be by random assignment. Furthermore, teams will be rotated between Phase 1 and Phase 2 of this project. Assignments for Phase 1 will be posted at this site by September 1, 1999. Assignments for Phase 2 & 3 will be posted by October 11, 1999. All teams in Phases 2 & 3 will be working with the same GUI design (determined through a competition of designs completed in Phase 1), so the scrambling of teams will not adversely affect the teams' ability to complete the latter stages of the project.

These pages are relevant for the Fall 1999 semester.
Any questions or problems with these pages should be sent to Professor H.