Life Cycle Objectives (LCO)
Life Cycle Objectives (LCO)
Pocket Grocery List
Beau Crawford
Tuan Van
1/08/2005
1. Operational Concepts
1.1 Statement of Purpose
The proposed system, Pocket Grocery List, will provide a convenient and intuitive way for a user to save time and money. The user creates a grocery list consisting of the items they wish to purchase using a PDA. This list can be created and saved locally with or without an Internet connection. Once a wireless Internet connection is available, the user can select from a list of possible grocery stores and the total sale can be determined accordingly.
The database of the selected store closest to the provided starting address will be searched for the desired grocery list items. All matching items will be displayed together with their corresponding price. At this point, the user confirms the selected items and quantity, and the total sale is calculated and displayed. Additionally, driving directions/map will be provided along with the store’s information (i.e. address, phone number).
1.2 Project Objectives and Scope
• User Community
Grocery shoppers.
• Program Environment
PDA running on Microsoft Pocket PC 2002/2003 with handwriting recognition technologies and wireless Internet capabilities. Note that an active Internet connection is needed for complete program operation.
• Major Benefits
The system will allow users to create their grocery lists in an intuitive fashion. Note that these grocery lists are saved locally on the user’s PDA so that previously saved lists can be accessed for convenient reuse. Furthermore, users can save time since our system informs them of the desired store closest to their starting location. In addition, users can save time by conveniently checking whether or not a desired store carries a particular product. Most importantly, the system allows grocery shoppers to save money by comparing prices of local grocery stores.
• System Capabilities
o Create new grocery list
o Save grocery list
o Open existing grocery list
o Grocery list editing can be done with or without an active Internet connection
o Search local grocery stores for the desired grocery list items
o Get map/directions of the desired closest store
o Calculate total price of desired grocery list items
• System Limitations
o User can only search the grocery stores that are willing to provide item data. See combo box in Figure 2.
o User must select different stores to search in order to do price comparisons. More specifically, the system does not compare prices of stores against one another.
o The system doesn’t let the user know whether or not item is in stock - the system only provides item-pricing information.
o If a store does not carry a particular product, the system does not let the user know of other stores that do.
o Calculation of total price does not include sales tax.
o No online item purchasing.
1.3 Project Vision
The figures below illustrate our project vision of the UI and system functionality. More specifically, Figure 1 shows the user options upon program launch. Figure 2 shows the grocery list editor in which users create their handwritten grocery list and select their store of interest. Figure 3 shows matching items displayed along with their corresponding price after database access. Figure 4 shows the map of the closest desired store with respect to the provided starting address. Note that these mockup images are simply used for illustrative purposes, and the final product might look different.
[pic]
2. System Requirements
2.1 Computer Hardware Requirements
2.1a Client
• PDA Pocket PC with built-in wireless Internet capabilities or wireless Internet card
• PDA Cradle
2.1b Server
• Internet Web Server
• Microsoft Database SQL Server
2.2 Computer Software Requirements
2.2a Client
• Microsoft Pocket PC 2002/2003 OS
• Microsoft Transcriber
• Microsoft ActiveSync 3.7
2.2b Server
• Windows XP/NT Professional OS
• SQL Server 2000 Client
• Microsoft MapPoint Web Services
2.3 Computer Communication Requirements
The server and client shall be connected to the Internet for communication through web services. The system will be hosted on a server provided by the UW CSE department.
3. System and software architecture
3.1 System Structure
Figure 5 illustrates the interaction between the user and the system structure. From the user interface data is passed via the Internet to the MapPoint web services, allowing us to determine the closest store to the user’s given starting address. We then search the store’s database for item pricing.
[pic]
3.2 Software Components
Figure 4 shows the control flow of the system.
4. Lifecycle plan
4.1 Who would be Interested and Why?
Grocery shoppers will be interested in using our system. First, users of the proposed system will save money by comparing prices of groceries among local grocery stores. Second, users can save time by conveniently checking whether or not a desired store carries a particular product. Additionally, users can save time since our system informs the user of the closest desired store to their starting location. Finally, users create their grocery lists in an intuitive and natural manner. Note that these lists can then be saved locally to the PDA for future reuse.
4.2 Who would be Supportive and Why?
Major competing grocery stores would be interested in supporting our system. Competing grocery stores can attract new customers, since customers can make a well educated decision of where to buy their groceries based on the information that our system provides (i.e. store location, item pricing, and item matching), therefore allowing stores to potentially generate more revenue.
4.3 Who are the Stakeholders Now and in the Future?
Most importantly, the major stakeholders in the beginning are the competing grocery stores. It is essential that the stores are willing to provide us with grocery item data. Later on, it is critical that both the grocery shoppers and the grocery stores are major stakeholders. The stores must be major stakeholders in order for us to have the data needed to provide our service to the users. In addition, the users must be major stakeholders, since the stores would not go through the effort of providing up-to-date item information if they were not to benefit.
5. Feasibility Rationale
5.1 Cost Analysis
The cost of the project is approximately 9 weeks of work from 8-9 students. If the project turns out to be easier or more difficult than we anticipated, we can scale up or scale down respectively.
5.1a Scale up
• Starting location could be determined by using GPS
• Grocery list creation could be done using voice recognition
• System could perform automatic price analysis between local stores
• System could provide inventory information to the user. More specifically, stock quantity and availability.
• Exact total could be calculated. Note that this would be tricky since some grocery items have tax while others do not. In addition, sales tax varies depending on store location.
5.1b Scale down
• Eliminate MapPoint web services. The system will have to be redesigned, but the change will allow for a much simpler implementation. Note that this change will alter user functionality (e.g. store locating).
5.2 Risk Analysis
• When converting handwritten grocery list items into text for database searching, it is necessary that the spelling is correct and the handwriting is legible, otherwise, the database search will likely fail.
• Currently, MapPoint web services are available for only a 45-day trial period. Thus, we might need to obtain a license.
• Accuracy of search results depends on item data provided by the store.
• Should we be unable to obtain real store data, toy data might need to be produced.
• When finding the store closest to the given starting address, there are no guarantees that this store is in our database.
• Excessive information returned from the database search. For example, if the user searches for “milk”, database might return “milk duds”, “milky way”, “milk Chocolate”, “1% milk”, “2% milk” etc.
-----------------------
Figure 5: System architecture
Figure 4: Map of closest store
Figure 3: Grocery list search results
[pic]
Figure 1: Options screen
Figure 2: Grocery list editor
[pic]
Figure 6: Flowchart of major software components
................
................
In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.
To fulfill the demand for quickly locating and searching documents.
It is intelligent file search solution for home and business.