1.
8 Methodology
This section outlines the step-by-step methodology for developing our e-commerce platform for
university students as a Progressive Web App (PWA). We use Agile Methodology for its
flexibility to adapt to students' evolving needs, enabling quick updates through feedback. It fosters close
collaboration with users and allows staged feature releases for continuous improvement. The project
will be completed over the next three months, with each phase addressing requirements, design,
implementation, and testing.
1. Requirements Gathering (Weeks 1-2)
During this phase, we will focus on collecting insights from various stakeholders, including
university students and other sellers, to ensure the platform effectively meets their diverse needs.
Steps We Follow:
Interviews & Questionnaires:-
Conduct 10-15 interviews with students from different departments to gather
qualitative insights on their shopping preferences, the types of products they need, and
usability expectations.
Survey 5 sellers (students with sales experience and local businesses) to
understand the challenges they face when selling items online and their
expectations for a user-friendly platform.
Competitor Analysis:-
Study platforms like Facebook Marketplace, and Telegram marketplaces to
extract best practices in user experience, product listings, and seller-buyer
interactions.
Analyze the features offered by e-commerce platforms serving university
communities to identify gaps in the market and opportunities for differentiation.
By the end of Week 2, we aim to have clearly documented requirements that encompass the
needs of both student and stakeholder sellers. This includes specific product types, essential
platform features, and potential constraints, such as network issues and usability challenges.
2. Design Phase (Weeks 3-4)
This phase will focus on transforming the requirements into a practical design for the PWA.
Steps We follow:
Project Constraints:
Usability: The app must be intuitive and easy to navigate, especially for users who may
not be tech-savvy. We will establish usability criteria based on the feedback gathered
during the requirements phase.
Performance: The app should load within 3 seconds and handle at least 1000 concurrent
users. Performance benchmarks will be defined early in the design process.
Maintainability: We will ensure the codebase is modular and well-documented,
facilitating future updates and scalability
Design Strategy:
Wireframing and Prototyping: We will create low-level wireframes to visualize the web
app layout and structure, followed by high-level prototypes using Figma (others tools).
feedback from users will be gathered on these prototypes to improve the design.
Comparative Analysis: We will review existing e-commerce apps used by students,
analyzing their strengths and weaknesses to inform our design choices.
3. Implementation Phase (Weeks 5-8)
We will follow an agile development process to implement the PWA. The core features will be
built first, and additional functionalities will be added iteratively
Technology We will use :-
Frontend:
[Link]: A framework for building the user interface.
React Router: Used for handling navigation between pages.
Tailwind CSS/Bootstrap5: A utility-first CSS framework for designing responsive and
modern UI components.
Service Workers: Enable offline access by caching essential resources.
Push Notifications: Implemented using web push APIs to notify students about new
products or messages.
AuthO : for user authentication
Backend:
[Link]: A server-side environment for building APIs.
[Link]: A framework that simplifies the creation of server routes and handling
requests.
MongoDB: A NoSQL database used to store user data and product listings.
Version Control:
Git: A distributed version control system that allows our Team to work on a project
simultaneously, tracking changes and managing versions efficiently
4. Testing and Quality Assurance (Weeks 9 -10)
This phase will focus on identifying and fixing bugs, ensuring that the platform performs well
Testing Plan:
Testing Type Description
Unit Testing Test individual components (e.g., product listing, chat)
using Jest.
Integration Testing Ensure seamless interaction between the frontend and
backend.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Release to a pilot group of students and collect feedback on
usability
Offline Testing Verify that the app works smoothly even without an internet
connection.
Performance Testing Assess the platform's speed and responsiveness across
devices.
5. Deployment and Launch (Week 11)
Once the PWA is tested and stable, we will deploy it and make it accessible to students.
Steps:
Deployment Details
Steps
PWA Deployment Use Heroku or Vercel for deploying [Link] backend and PWA
frontend.
Soft Launch Release to a trial group and gather feedback.
Full Launch Make the PWA available to the entire student community through a
custom domain.
6. Post-Launch Monitoring and Feedback
After launch, we will continuously monitor the platform to ensure smooth operation.
Monitoring Steps Details
Analytics Use Google Analytics to track user behavior and
identify areas for improvement.
Bug Fixes and Updates Address any issues reported by users and plan for
future updates