Narva and Desimone's Online Ride-Board

Problem Statement for Online Ride-Board for Trinity

Team Average_Joe's: Narva and Desimone

1.	High Level Problem Summary Currently, if you plan to drive to another city from Trinity or want to get a ride somewhere, your only hope is to post a piece of paper on a mostly ignored bit of wall in Mather and hope someone sees it. This module will keep track of where users are driving to or are looking for a ride to, and when their trip is. The module will use a Google API to keep track of who’s destinations are near who’s and alert drivers and hopeful riders of possible matches.

2. Detailed Problem Statement

2.1 FUNCTION •	Add new users as either drivers or hopeful riders •	Keep track of who is driving •	Keep track of who is looking for a ride •	Keep track of everyone’s destination •	Keep track of everyone’s trip dates •	Use a Google API to figure out which riders have a destination near or on the way to which driver’s destination. •	Alert both drivers and riders of possible matches •	Delete trips from memory after the date passes.

2.2 FORM Usability •	Simple interface that either integrates with a stripped down version of Sahana, or is possibly a stand-alone program.

Security •	Users will not be able to see any sort of list of other user’s travel plans, other than the names and dates of travel matches.

Hardware and Software Constraints The module will be running on a server, with users accessing it via the internet. Therefore, users will not have to have the system running on their personal computers.

2.3 ECONOMY This module will be free to all Trinity users.

2.4 TIME We have until the end of the semester to finish developing the program.

3. Key Stakeholder Sign-offs Ralph Morelli

Feedback
This sounds like a nice project. However we're concerned that parts of it may be too ambitious to finish within the semester, particularly the Google Map functionality that you describe. The Google Map API does not now include routing functions. May we suggest that for this semester at least you limit the Google Map functionality to displaying on a map the destinations of each of the current rides in the DB and letting the user decide whether an existing ride gets them close enough to their destination.

Similarly, in terms of the idea of incorporating it into Facebook, we think that's a good idea, but again it may be too ambitious to accomplish during the semester. May we suggest that you investigate that option, but not necessarily make it part of this semester's project. Instead, you could develop a standalone ride board that could later be easily incorporated into Facebook or other systems.

Go for it! -- ram and trishan