Analysis #2 – Use Cases

As we’ve already stated we formulated a set of use case names after our initial brain storming.

Here they are:

• Add products to the stock
• Remove products from the stock
• Manage product information
• Create a grocery list
• Create recipes
• Manage recipes
• Prepare recipes (bulk remove products from stock)
• Organize recipes to a diet

After we identified these, we detailed the first and the third (“Add products to the stock”, “Manage product information”), because they incorporate all devices and technologies we want to use. You can find the current version of the detailed use case documents in our repository. At the moment they are only available in German, if the need occurs we will translate them to English sometime.

From these two use case description we started developing a first domain model and system architecture. We will introduce them in the next post.

Analysis #1 – Approach

When we started CAKIS we agreed that we want to apply methods and practices, we had learned in the past semesters. So we began looking for a development proccess with two main requirements in mind:

At first the process should have very little management overhead, because we are a very small team (two persons) and want to focus on getting the project done and we have quite tough time constraints.

The second  requirement was that the process should be flexible, because we are quite uncertain if and how the project requirements will change in the future due to problems of time or technical problems.

Finally we found the book Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process by Craig Larman. It describes object-oriented analysis with UML2 and the unified process in an easy to read and understandable manner. The unified process as it is described in the book fulfills the mentioned requirements, because it supports some kind of tayloring so we can leave unwanted or unnecessary parts out. The second aspect is that its iteration oriented and recommends early prototyping.

As described in the book we started with a brainstorming what CAKIS should be capable to do and defined our vision. Based on our ideas we formulated a first set of usecases. You can read about them here in the near future.

Sharing our vision

Our aim with CAKIS is to develop a household inventory system that will help average people to run their household more smoothly. We think it’s the right time to introduce such a system, because the use of smartphones, notebooks and internet technologies is today very common and it is continuously spreading.

At the beginning we want to limit the system’s capabilities to the management of  food and other goods in the kitchen. This approach will help us to test general concepts and ideas in system and user interface design.

The main features we plan at the moment are:

• manage the food stock,
• create grocery lists,
• manage a custom recipe book,
• plan a diet for several days.

The system will be distributed. We’ll have a central server storing the data and several types of clients, like smartphones, touchscreens and others. For example it will be possible to record products via a smartphone camera and the products barcode tag. Further we want to integrate internet recipe and barcode databases.

Another focus will be the user interface design and the usability of the whole system, so it can be easily used by less computer affine persons and it is really helpful in daily life.

That’s all for the moment, in the next post we will show a first draft of our system design.

Have you met CAKIS?

We like to introduce CAKIS and ourselves! CAKIS stands for “Computer Aided Kitchen Inventory System”. To get the idea, have you ever experienced one of the following situations?

“I want to bake a cake at the weekend, but do I have enough flour at home?”

or

“Damnit, I forgot the shopping list at home!”

Because we did very often and we had to find a topic for our student research project at the university, we decided to start CAKIS. When it’s done it will hopefully help us to avoid these kind of situations in the future. We will explain in future posts in more detail which features we plan, which technologies we will use, etc.

So who are we?

We are two students at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in Mannheim where we study information technology. Our names are Florian Arndt and Christian Kerl.