Project Concept

• Instructions
• Grading Rubric

Instructions

Each team will develop a Rails-based online shopping app for a very, very specialized selection of purchasable things. 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 prices that can be adjusted by the admin.
• Item quantities in stock that automatically decrease as items are sold and 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.

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

Niche Constraints

The instructor will give your team a specific set of criteria that your niche must meet. The possible criteria and their definitions are as follows.

• Real/Fantasy Criteria:
  • Real: Things that could exist in our current reality.
  • Fantasy: Things that could not exist in our current reality.
• Living/Inanimate Criteria:
  • Living: Things that are alive.
    • Flora: Plants. Fungi are also allowed.
    • Fauna: Animals.
  • Inanimate: Things that are not living.
• Size Criteria:
  • Tiny: Things that could fit in the palm of your hand.
  • Small: Things larger than the palm of your hand and could be carried in one or two hands.
  • Large: Things so large that 1 to 20 people could fit inside (if it was hollow).
  • Huge: Things so large that 50 or more people could fit inside it (if it was hollow).

Defining Your App’s Niche

In order for your team to move forward with their project, the instructor 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, specialized, and creative.

✘ Examples of bad niche ideas, because they are too general and uncreative:

• Clothing and apparel
• Computers
• Books

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

• Noodle-themed t-shirts
• Squirrels and squirrel-care products
• Magic wands (that are actually magic!)

What niche-specific attributes and 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:

• Niche-Specific Attributes: 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.
• Niche-Specific Features: 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 (past or present) may have any of the same (or very similar) niches or niche-specific features.

✔ Example of a Good Project Concept

Niche:

Noodle-themed t-shirts

Niche-Specific Attributes:

• 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)

Niche-Specific Features:

• 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 here, but your team must have two or more for your app.

Grading Rubric

• Pass: Instructor approves concept.
• Fail: Instructor does not approve concept.

Quality Criteria

• Follow Instructions. Adheres to the team-specific niche constraints and other requirements (e.g., having the required niche-specific attributes and features).
• Novel. Creative, original, and interesting.
• Coherent. The concept is internally logical and consistent, and forms a unified whole.