project-proposal-2025

Campus Express

Abstract

Many students in Australia, particularly those at UQ, often purchase daily necessities from supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles. However, adverse weather conditions, such as tropical cyclones, can lead to supply shortages, making it difficult to obtain essential goods. To ensure that UQ students never have to worry about such shortages, I believe it is essential to develop a platform that helps them manage their shopping needs efficiently.

This is where Campus Express comes in. The idea is to connect students living near grocery stores with those in need of essential items. When these students are already planning to commute to campus, they can pick up and deliver goods to their peers, making the process seamless and efficient. This system not only ensures that UQ students receive their necessities promptly but also allows commuting students to make productive use of their journey, saving time while earning extra income.

Author

Name: Bowen Guo

Student number: 48993289

Functionality

Users can submit requests for purchasing daily necessities, and students living near grocery stores can accept orders to buy and deliver the requested items to the specified location. Delivery partners have the flexibility to choose any available order and complete the task at their convenience. Once the order is successfully fulfilled, the transaction is completed.

This platform enhances peer-to-peer assistance among UQ students, making shopping more convenient while allowing students to support each other efficiently.

The detailed functionalities are as follows:

1. User

   • Register/Login: User can login with their account. If user don’t hava an account they need to register an new account before using this platform.
   • Relese an order: User can submit a request. Specifically the require items, perfered grocery store, and delivery destination.
   • Track the order: User can check the status about their order. Including accepted, purchased, Delivered.
   • Payment: User can pay by many methods such as credit card, PayPal, WeChat Pay etc.
   • Order confirmation and rating: After receiving the items, user can confirm the delivery and rate the deliverer based on their service.

2. Deliverer

   • Register/Login: Deliverer should register so that they can login in this platform.
   • Pick up the order: Deliverers can browse available orders, select one that matches their route, and confirm acceptance.
   • Update the order: Deliverers can update the order status at different stages. For example “Order assigned”, purchasing”, “on the way”, “delivered”.
   • Delivery Console: A personal dashboard where deliverers can track their ongoing and completed orders, earnings, and performance ratings.

3. Administrator

   • User/Deliver management: Handles user and deliverer accounts. For instance

     Identity cheak—Ensures that all users on the platform are verified UQ students.

   • Order management: Monitors ongoing orders, resolves disputes. For instance undelivered orders, incorrect items.

The following diagram illustrates the key roles and interactions within the platform, showing how users, deliverers, and administrators collaborate to ensure a smooth and efficient ordering process.

Scope

The scope for the MVP of this system will include following features:

1. Register/Login

   • User/Deliverer can register and login using their account.

2. Order control

   We should focus on the core functionalities of this platform. Therefore, in the MVP phase, we at least ensure implementation of these essential features.

   • Release an order

     User can create an order and the order details should have require items, perfered grocery store, estimated cost and delivery destination.

   • Pick up the order

     Deliverer can browser many orders. Decide to pick up order when cheaking the order details.

   • Update the order

     Deliver supposed to update the order in time. Order status like “Order assigned”, purchasing”, “on the way”, “delivered”.

Quality Attributes

Reliability

Reliability is a critical feature in Campus Express to ensure stable order transactions and data consistency. To maintain a seamless experience for users and deliverers, the platform should implement the following function: error handling, data Consistency, and error handling.

• Ensuring Accurate Order Processing: The platform should ensure that order transactions can be processed correctly. In case of failure or data loss.
• Maintaining Order Data Consistency: For instance prevent discrepancies between users and deliverers in order status.
• Error Handling: System crashes can disrupt order processing and lead to data inconsistencies. To prevent this, we should use some mechanisms such as automatic data backup.

Modularity

• Modular design is essential in the Campus Express platform, as the system consist of multiple functions, such as user order placement and order management, each handling distinct tasks. To maintain efficiency and scalability, it is crucial to separate these functions into independent, flexible modules while ensuring low coupling and high cohesion between them.

Security

• The system can control security in three aspects:
  1. Encrypted storage of sensitive data of user/delivery.
  2. Ensure secure payment processing via trusted third-party providers.
  3. Protect user privacy by using role control, preventing unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information.

Evaluation

Reliability Evaluation

• Functional Testing
  • Use unit tests and integration tests to verify the core functions. Ensuring that order placement, acceptance, completion work as expected under different conditions.
• Data Integrity Checks
  • Place multiple concurrent orders and confirm no duplicate or lost transactions occur.
• Redundancy Design
  • Use automated backup mechanisms to restore orders and transaction data within 60 seconds of failure.

Modularity Evaluation

• Test modules individually
  • Run user management, order management and other modules independently without relying on other modules to ensure that they can work independently.
• Re-test modules
  • When a module is modified, it should not affect the normal operation of other modules. In this case, we need to re-test the affected modules. For example, if we update the Payment Module (e.g., adding support for a new payment method like Apple Pay), the Order Management Module should continue to function normally.

Security Evaluation

• Authentication
  • Check whether unauthorized user can access restricted data. For example, a deliverer should only be able to access their own profile and assigned orders, but not view other deliverers’ details or user information.
• Data Encryption Validation
  • Use Postman to intercept API requests and check if data is sent over HTTPS.
  • Attempt brute-force cracking on password hashes using Hashcat. If the process takes such a long time to decode the password, it indicates strong security.