Project Concepts

Each team will develop a Rails-based online shopping app for a very, very specialized selection of products. Each app will have a combination of typical shopping-app features and niche-specific features.

niche
/niCH,nēSH/
denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

The niche-specific features must be highly original and will give your team’s app its special “personality”.

Shopping App Must-Haves

There are certain things that your team’s app must have:

• Item descriptions with pictures that an admin can edit (including image uploads).
• Item quantities that can be adjusted by the admin and decrease as items are sold.
• Item prices that can be adjusted by the admin.
• A persistent cart from which a signed-in shopper can add/remove items.
• Checkout features that collect payment and shipping/delivery/pick-up/etc. info and update the cart, item quantities, etc.
• Features for browsing/searching/filtering item descriptions.
• Use the money-rails gem to handle dollar values: https://github.com/RubyMoney/money-rails

Your team’s shopping-app features should not be limited to just the above things, but it must include all of the above.

Defining Your App’s Niche

In order for your team to move forward with their project, I must accept your team’s project concept.

The project concept must provide satisfactory answers to the following questions.

What is your app’s niche?

Your app’s niche must be very specific and specialized.

✘ Examples of bad niche ideas, because they are to general:

• Clothing and apparel
• Computers
• Books

✔ Examples of good niche ideas, because they are very specific and specialized:

• Noodle-themed t-shirts
• Collectible computers from the 1980s
• Young-adult novels featuring wizards and witches

When choosing your niche, try to select one that at least one member of your team knows very well.

Important! No two teams may have the same (or very similar) niches.

What niche-specific features will your app have?

Providing features that are specific to your app’s niche is essential for giving your app its distinctive personality.

Your team’s answer to this question must include the following:

• Item descriptions with multiple niche-specific attributes that no general shopping app would have.
  • It is assumed that your team’s app will allow browsing/sorting/searching/filtering based on these niche-specific attributes.
• At least two non-trivial niche-specific features that go beyond typical shopping-app features – be creative with these!

When choosing features, try to “get inside the heads” of your niche audience. What are they like? What do they value most? What would make them happiest?

Important! No two teams may have any of the same (or very similar) niche-specific features.

✔ Example of a Good Project Concept

Niche

Noodle-themed t-shirts

Niche-Specific Features

• T-shirt descriptions will have the following noodle-related attributes:
  • Noodle ethnicity (e.g., Chinese, Italian)
  • Noodle style (e.g., ramen, spaghetti, vermicelli, bowtie)
  • Noodle brand (e.g., Nissin Top Ramen, Barilla)
• T-shirt descriptions will have the following t-shirt-related attributes:
  • Size (e.g., S, M, L, XL, XXL)
  • Fit (e.g., men, women)
  • Color (e.g., white, pink, blue, black)
• Users can propose new t-shirts based on noodle products. To make a proposal, the user must submit information about the noodle product (including pictures). Proposals can be viewed and up-voted by other users. That way, it will be known which new t-shirts are most in demand. If a proposal is accepted, it will be moved into an accepted category with links to the new t-shirts created based on the proposal. Proposals can also be administratively rejected if they don’t follow the rules.

(I have only included one non-trivial niche-specific feature above, but your team must have two or more for your app.)

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Grading Rubric

Scored out of 20 possible points.

• 5 points - Has instructor-approved niche.
• 5 points - Has item descriptions with multiple niche-specific attributes that no general shopping app would have.
• 10 points - Has at least two non-trivial niche-specific features that go beyond typical shopping-app features.

Points will be awarded/deducted based on the quality/completeness of each item. Scoring criteria include how well instructions were followed and the clarity of presentation.