Problem: To come up with an idea for a Quidditch shopping cart website and launch it on a popular cloud computing platform
Google Cloud • Opencart • Crowdfunding • Chatbot • SCRUM
November 2022
Group Project
We called our store Diagon Alley, offering quality quidditch essentials accessible to players all around the world. My contribution to the project was mainly in research, launching and editing the website, developing a chatbot and in the design aspect- designing crowdfunding materials and website assets.
We did research on customer needs and came up with a product portfolio consisting of two broad categories, wearables and equipment. These included products such as jerseys, guards and goggles, and hoops, brooms and bludger sets.
First, we had to choose which cloud provider we wanted to host our website on out of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Me and my team members were equally familiar with Google Cloud and AWS, and we decided to move forward with Google Cloud because we agreed that it had more user-friendly solutions and APIs that we would be needing for this project.
Next, we needed to pick an eCommerce platform for our website out of the industry leaders: OpenCart, PrestaShop and Magenta. We did a cross-study of the three, looking at user experiences and relevant examples online to draw conclusions. Our needs did not ask for much, and we felt that OpenCart was the most intuitive and accessible. This is what launching an OpenCart instance looks like on Google Cloud:
Once our virtual instance was up and running, we imported our product list into OpenCart. This included uploading product names, descriptions, images, prices, etc. that we had prepared beforehand. This is what our website looked like after some personalization and beautification:
We used Google's Dialogflow to develop our chatbot. It supported our collaboration needs and was easiest to integrate with the website. It also helped us with tips and tutorials along the way. Our goal was to develop a basic rule-based chatbot to fulfill simple user intents regarding product catalog and specifications and questions about orders (status, cancel, etc.). Here's a look at the front-end of our intents list and decision tree:
Once our chatbot was ready, we integrated it into our website instance. Here's an example interaction between user and chatbot:
We set up a crowdfunding page on Indiegogo to 'raise funds' for the idea. It was only for educational purposes and never went online. We added donor tiers with incremental benefits and an overview of our idea and plea for donations.
But the need of the hour was a good promotional video. It would explain everything about the store. Our resources were limited and the topic was quirky. I had an idea and took up the responsibility. I scoured the internet for good quality quidditch videos that I could clip for the purposes of our video. We wrote a script and got a friend to do a voiceover. This was the result:
Since this was a very comprehensive project, we used the SCRUM methodology for project management. We planned and executed 3 sprints of 1 week each. It helped us delegate tasks, maintain accountability and meet deadlines on time. For example, here's a screenshot of our second sprint:
This project asked for a lot of research to be done before making decisions and along the way I realized that research suits my style of work a lot and I was able to enjoy it because when working on something I like to break it down and make sure I understand the fundamentals (explain it to a 5 year old) and am well-educated on the topic. It also made me realize how easy it is to start an online business. A person having no knowledge of the cloud or coding could launch their website with some endeavor, and at a great deal!
It was also a good project that helped me understand better practical usage of Cloud Platforms working up to my AWS Cloud Foundations Certificate Exam.
