THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES
FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING AND
INFORMATION SCIENCE
INFO 3435 eCommerce Project
Report
Project Title:
Student(s) Name(s):
Student(s) ID No.:
Date
:…./…./2015
Advisors: Dr. Alexander Nikov
Ms. Danielle Maria Thornhill
INFO 3435 EC Project
Document1
page 1 of 5
1
1.1
Website Requirements Specification
Market analysis and e-commerce rationale
The market analysis is a 1-2 pages summary of the company, its marketing environment, its main customer
market, its marketing mix, and two or three of its major competitors. Additional information may be placed in
an appendix.
The e-commerce rationale is a 1-2 pages rationale as to why the company or organization should increase
and improve its e-commerce activity, given the particular nature of its marketing environment.
1.2
General Description
Purpose of this section: an "executive overview" but very customer-oriented
1.2.1
User Personas and Characteristics
User Profile Form
Application:
Potential Users:
Hardware Experience:
Software and Interface Experience:
Experience with Similar Applications:
Task Experience:
Frequency of Use:
Key Interface Design Requirements that Profile Suggests:
A persona is the profile of a fictional user that represents the intended audience(s) for this
product. A persona should share characteristics with real people, but should not directly
describe any real person. Taken together, the personas you define should represents wide a
variety of characteristics as possible. For this concept tube effective, your team will use these
personas throughout the design and evaluation process to provide a point of reference.
Your team will define a minimum of two personas. The detailed descriptions will appear in
appendices. This section summarizes your team's personas and their characteristics. For
example, a product for sixth graders could present personas for
INFO 3435 EC Project
Document1
page 2 of 5
o
o
User A, an 11-year-old power-user
Teacher, who is relatively competent in the use of computers.
Create the detailed description for each of the personas. Uniquely identify each persona, either
with a descriptive label or with a name. If you wish, invent a picture of each persona. For each
persona, describe their relevant personal characteristics and their general goals with respect to
this product. Be sure that the characteristics that distinguish personas from one another are
clear. If the personas are particularly long (e.g., a page or more each), then the detailed
descriptions can be moved into an appendix.
1.2.2
Website Perspective



1.2.3
If the product is stand-alone, give the relationship to other websites.
If the website is part of a larger website, then identify its interface to the other websites.
Identify the website's external interfaces with its environment.
Overview of Functional Requirements
A short description of the functions to be performed by the software, i.e., what the product
should do. This description must be in a form understandable to users, operators, and clients.
This section should not be design-oriented, a common mistake.
1.2.4
Overview of Data Requirements
Describe data that are input or output from the product as well as any data that are stored within
the system for example in files or on disk. This section should only cover data requirements from
the user’s point of view. Once again, this should not be design-oriented.
1.2.5
Other requirements
If there are no other requirements, then write "None at this time” rather than leaving this section
blank.
1.3
Task-oriented requirements
This section will provide a user's-eye-view of the product. Use the personas you defined in section 2.1.1 to make
the descriptions concrete. Describe the setting, include screenshots or sketches of the possible appearance of
the screen(s), give samples of the data that is stored, entered, or output, and invent dramatic scenarios that
demonstrate the product in operation.
See more details in the documents Tasks and requirements.pdf
(http://www2.sta.uwi.edu/~anikov/info3435/projects/tasks-and-requirements.pdf) or tasks-and-requirementsshort.pdf (http://www2.sta.uwi.edu/~anikov/info3435/projects/tasks-and-requirements-short.pdf)
1.3.1 Document the Current Tasks
Create a list of names of tasks as follows:
 Mandatory tasks: absolutely must include (shall):
 Desirable tasks: Should include:
 Could include:
 Exclude:
Select 3-6 most important tasks from them.
1.3.2 Describe each task
For each user task, document the following information:
 The actual task performed
 Tasks that precede, follow, or interrupt the task (task flow)

 Task products and where they go
 Common task performance problems, errors

could be improved

workspace that would make mouse use difficult)
INFO 3435 EC Project
Document1
ideas about how task performance
, dirty
page 3 of 5

Add 1-3 screenshots/sketches for each task
Task Detail Table
Task #
1.3.3
Task
Frequency
Display
Requirements
Input
Requirements
Comments
Document Problems and Opportunities
1.3.4 Develop use case scenarios
Use UML
1.3.5
2
2.1
Describe future tasks (1-2) if any
Website design
Design of the virtual business
For this part of the assignment you need to describe the following aspects of the business:
1. What products and/or services does the business offer, the categories of products/services, approximate
number of product titles in each category, what (approximately) is the product information that the
customers will be able to access?
2. Would the products be produced by the same people who maintain the web site, or they will be acquired
elsewhere?
3. What is the target audience of the web site: general public, or people who are interested in specialized
products for their work or hobby?
4. Will the web site provide membership, and if yes, which services will be restricted to members only. If
there is a membership, what information will the customers need to provide to get a membership? Also,
what optional information can they provide?
5. How would the customers get their products: sent by mail or download? Would the customers be able to
check on their order online?
6. What kind of payment would you accept: major credit cards online, major credit cards by phone, checks,
electronic cash/checks?
INFO 3435 EC Project
Document1
page 4 of 5
7. What kind of customer support documentation will you offer, would it be free of charge, would it be
accessible to everyone or only to registered users.
8. What additional facilities will your web site offer: electronic forums, searchable customer feedback,
mailing lists, etc?
2.2
E-Commerce Critique and Recommendations
The e-Commerce critique and recommendations is a 1-2 page critique of the company/organization's website
and apparent e-commerce activity, and recommendations for improvement. The summary is to detail what the
company's e-commerce priorities should be, and your proposal for how the company/organization should
proceed. Additional information may be placed in an appendix. A detailed implementation plan is not expected,
but you should provide enough specifics to make the proposal a substantial foundation for practical follow-up
with the company.
2.3
The functionality of the web site
For this part of the assignment you need to describe:
1. How will access to product information be organized: customers will be presented with the index of
products, with a search engine, or with both? Also, what kinds of requests can the customers make (for
instance, if your database offers clothes, will the customers be able to search by size, by category
(men/women/kids), by kind (sweaters, jeans, etc.), by the label, by price range, by any combination of
the above?)
2. What will be the functionality of the shopping cart: would it be possible to select several products, specify
quantity, buy only some of the products on the cart, and so on. You don't need to provide too much
detail on this question, since we haven't covered shopping carts in detail yet
3. What options will the order form provide? In which different forms a payment could be made?
4. What other forms will the customers fill? For instance, you might have a feedback form, a form for
checking on an order, a form to request e-mail updates about a product, or products, and so on.
5. What other searches will be available for the customers? For instance, search for manuals, for a FAQ
entry, for customer's feedback, etc.
2.4
Low-fidelity prototype
Develop low-fidelity prototypes of designs (5-10 webpages) that you believe will satisfy the major requirements.
2.5
Walkthrough
Discuss the prototypes with your team and (ideally) potential users. You should be concerned here with how the
general interface representation fits the users' view of their tasks. For the prototype designs that seem
promising, use the tasks from Assignment 1 to perform a task-centred walkthrough of your prototype. Shortly list
the usability problems allocated by the walkthrough using the scenarios.
3
Computer (high-fidelity) prototype
Develop medium-fidelity prototype of lo-fi prototype. Conduct design reviews (walk through the user tasks and
use scenarios). Revise prototype. Conduct usability test (e.g. heuristic evaluation cf. usability evaluation tools
Interactive Heuristic Evaluation Toolkit). Describe short the usability problems allocated and design solutions.
Redesign hifi prototype based on design solutions.
References
Mention books, articles, web sites, worksheets, project documents, or people who are sources of information
about the application domain, etc. Give links to documents as appropriate. Alphabetize by last name of author.
INFO 3435 EC Project
Document1
page 5 of 5