Sean Thompson (#901426766)
Project Proposal
AIA 8803 – Spring 2007
1. Motivation and Objectives
Currently, there is no easy way for students to find restaurants available to them. This
limits a student to ordering only from restaurants they already know about. If you are
hungry then you spend an unnecessary amount of time looking up the restaurant’s
phone number in a phone book or online. Further, if you call first then you spend time
waiting on the phone for someone to take your order, you don’t know the menu, you
don’t know the specials, and you may not know how to get to the restaurant from
where you are, and may have to wait for your order even when you get there. On the
other hand, if you choose to go in then you spend a variable amount of time waiting
in line to order and for your food to be prepared. Lastly, should you choose to get
delivery then there are extra fees (delivery fee and tip) and extra time associated with
the service. Delivery is not optimal because what if they mess up your order?
There is also no effective way for restaurants to target customers. Companies spend
much of their money trying to get ads to prospective consumers. They can put ads in
mass media but there is often repetitive advertising, they can’t easily target people in
their near vicinity, and they can’t change specials if they get low on stock. In other
words, there is no easy way to target specific consumers or adjust pricing on-the-fly.
My solution will allow customers the following features:
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Favorite Restaurants List
Favorite Order List
Available Coupons
Company Finder / Find Service Provider
Directions
Online Ordering
My solution will allow restaurants the following features:
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On-the-fly Coupon Creation
User Placed Orders
Targeted Marketing and Coupon Distribution
Online Ordering
2. Related work
There are three major related projects (in order of descending sophistication):
1. The Real Yellow Pages – inconvenient, no search, not location-based, can’t
update, expired information, can’t target audience
2. Yahoo! Yellow Pages (yp.yahoo.com) – no restaurant description, no targeted
marketing, no coupon distribution, no online ordering unless provided by the
company itself
3. Google Maps (maps.google.com) – Same as above (Yahoo! Yellow Pages).
4. Campusfood.com – no distance indicator, no targeted marketing noticeable, no
mobile support, no offline support, primarily only targets college students.
3. Proposed Work
The project will have the following use cases:
Use Case 1: Company can send out a coupon to a subset of possible customers.
(e.g., regulars, new customers, etc.)
Use Case 2: Customer can find a restaurant according to category
Use Case 3: Customer can find a restaurant by their favorite list
Use Case 4: Customer can view a restaurant’s menu
Use Case 5: Customer can view available coupons
Use Case 6: Customer can place orders from the Customer App
Use Case 7: Customer can get directions (e.g., Yahoo! Maps) to their restaurant
This seems like the next evolution of how consumers will interact with their service
providers and vice versa. It gives consumer’s the ability to quickly get familiar with
their surroundings with regularly updated lists of service providers nearby. It gives
new companies the ability to quickly let consumers know they exist. It allows for
companies to quickly tune pricing and create specials to target specific consumers onthe-fly. It minimizes the time a customer needs to spent ordering and will improve a
company’s efficiency at placing orders. No longer will special orders be wrongly
placed by the middle man (e.g., waitress) – it’s limited to the consumer and the
person fulfilling the consumer’s request (e.g., chef). Consumer’s will be notified of
when their order is complete (or almost complete) so they know when to show up –
no need to call ahead or wait at the restaurant. When they do show up, they could
specify beforehand whether they want to eat-in or have it taken-out. This will yield
companies massive productivity gains and improve a consumer’s dining experience.
4. Plan of action (what resources, schedule, plan for evaluation)
There will be 3 components:
1. Company Web App – Company’s interface to the engine
2. the Engine – Contains and manages all the modules and powers both apps.
3. Consumer Client App – Consumer’s interface to the engine
The Company Web App and the Engine will be a servlet and Java app running on
WebSphere Application Server on RHEL. The Consumer Client App will be a Java
app running on a client-side platform such as Eclipse for desktops and laptops. I have
the hardware and software for this project.
Schedule (Weekly):
Week 1: Install and configure WAS and Eclipse and the necessary DB2 datasource
Week 2: Create and prime all databases with initial test information
Week 3: Install, configure, and test necessary messaging system
Week 4: Write and test the Engine (logic)
Week 5: Write and test the Engine interface (servlets)
Week 6: Write and test the Consumer Client App Interface
Week 7: Write and test the Company Web App Interface
Week 8: System Test
5. Evaluation and Testing Method
The goal of this project is to show the end-to-end ability of the use cases listed above.
The proving of the use cases will be used for evaluation. The Location-based Service
(LBS) is not intended to be accurate. I will either use randomly generated or a preset
set of locations to fulfill any requests to this service. Orders will not be placed with
any company however there will be a record of the transaction request in the engine.