David Kasprzyk
Karl Yerkes
CSE 403

Life Cycle Objectives

1. Operational Concepts

Lost No More is a collection of tools for getting driving directions and traffic conditions around the Seattle area.  
The top level system objectives of this product are:  To create a quick and easy to use MID porthole to MapQuest driving directions and WSDOT traffic information and to give the user a best route based on MapQuest / WSDOT data. We assume that the user has a Mobile Information Device capable of running MIDlets and of accessing Servlets that, in turn, have access to the World Wide Web. 

With this product a user should be able to enter location and destination into the MID and receive a specially formated set of text directions and an optional PNG formatted map showing the driving path. Additionally, the user may request "Smart Route Finding", in which case three different routes are calculated: the shortest distance between locations, the estimated fastest route based off of current highway conditions, and a route avoiding highways if possible.  Lastly, the user can request the current highway traffic conditions and receive a listing of current travel times for the major highways in the puget sound area and an optional PNG traffic map showing the conditions.

2. System Requirements
	
The environment of this product consists of the MID and the information sources for directions and traffic information. The MID has a relatively small display, cumbersome input methods, and limited memory size and processing ability. The MapQuest and WSDOT sites may change in a manner that would interfere with this product. Site design changes and network outages may occur that would make it break.

In order for this product to be useful, it must be easy to use, relatively quick, and its display comprehensible. Locations and destinations need to be storable for future access because they may be hard to enter for the first time. The response time on a request must be on the order of a few seconds. Images of traffic congestion and direction must be easy to see and understand.

To achieve such responsiveness, to majority of processing will be left to the servlet with the MIDlet being used simply to request data from the Servlet and display the data when it is received for the user. 

3. System and Software Architecture
	The system will consist of one or more interacting MIDlets, Servlets, and internet information sources; in this case MapQuest and WSDOT.  

In accessing driving directions, the Midlet requests driving directions from the Servlet and passes in the starting and ending locations. The Servlet then gets data from MapQuest.com, parses data and sends it back to the Midlet.  The directions are sent to the Midlet in easily readable format.  The map image data is converted to PNG and sent to the Midlet if requested.

To save locations, the Midlet passes both the location data and a title to the Servlet, which then stores the information for future use by the Midlet.

To access highway conditions, the Midlet requests the current conditions from the Servlet. The Servlet then gets the conditions from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)  website, parses data and sends it back to the Midlet.  The traveling times are sent to the Midlet in easily readable text format.  The traffic map image data is converted to PNG and sent to the Midlet if requested.

For smart route finding, the servlet uses known bypass points and current traffic conditions to estimate traveling times for routes using highways and uses these time to try and calculate the fastest route between locations.

4. Life-cycle Plan
	The users we are targeting with this product are Seattle are commuters and perhaps small business people who make deliveries. With this tool they can quickly get directions on the go, which makes it easy to deal with last minute change in plans.  They can check traffic conditions on the go instead of having to rely on checking before they leave or waiting for radio updates which don't give full conditions.  And they can find alternative routes from point A to point B without a lot of extra effort.

Realistically, maintainers will be necessary for the continuation of this project because of the possible instability of the relied upon information sources.  However a single programmer or small team would be very capable of all needed maintenance due to the use of existing resources in MapQuest and the WSDOT website.	

5. Feasibility Rationale

This project is feasible as long as reliable and useful access to information sources is maintained. That is, as long as WSDOT and MapQuest don't change so as to break the project. Or, as long as some entity maintains this project so as to keep up with those changes.

Additionally, each tool needed to be looked at for feasibility

Driving Directions: 
Mapping and directions are already provided through MapQuest.  The Servlet only needs to clean up the data and pass it to the Midlet.  However this leads to possible issues with image sizes vs. phone data rates as large image sizes would be heavy download burdens on most cell phones.

Possible solutions:
Don’t download the image unless the user asks for it.
Transmit smaller image chunks as needed. 

Highway Conditions: 
Conditions are already provided through the WSDOT website.  The Servlet only needs to clean up the data and pass it to the Midlet.  However this again leads to possible issues with image sizes vs. phone data rates as large image sizes would be heavy download burdens on most cell phones.

Possible solutions:
Don’t download the image unless the user asks for it.
Transmit smaller image chunks as needed. 

Smart Route Finding: 
This feature would by far require the largest portion of development.  It would need algorithms to find best routes using bypass points, estimate traveling times using data on the current highway conditions, and incorporating sub-paths using bypass points into a final path from the start point to the finish.  However all of these are well within the real of coding possibility on the Servlet end of the architecture.

Additionally, this tool would require knowledge of possible bypass points as good bypass routes would require a large number of bypass points.

Possible solutions:
Allow users to add their own bypass points along their most common routes.

6. Conclusion

Lost No More provides drivers with a powerful multi-tool by taking advantage of existing web resources. It uses a feasible design for today’s cell phones, allowing users to choose what they want to view so they don’t overload their phones bandwidth.  Storing locations and adding bypass points allows for user customization and easy expansion of the tools, and the use of existing resources means that the system would require only basic maintenance to continue running.