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E-Marketplace Case
Study
Actor Description and
Use Case
Spring 2001
Background
- Tool: Microsoft Word
- Input: Use Case Workshop with client and development team representatives; User Discovery Findings; branding strategy (developed by a third party)
- Primary Author: Anthony Hand
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has emerged as a popular and effective means of conceptualizing complex software design challenges and architecting solutions. My employer has recently adopted a subset of the UML methodology as a tool for architecting and building web sites and web-based applications.
The Functional Specifications document is a major deliverable of the Architecture Phase of a large project. Although a Business Analyst will usually lead in gathering the business requirements and writing this document, the User Experience Architect should also take a leading role in crafting the document as he or she is also one of the leading users of the document's specifications.
For the E-Marketplace project, the UEA team led the effort to gather the business requirements and integrate user discovery findings into this document. Over both the Architecture and Construction Phases of this project, the UEA team owned the responsibility for revising this document and ensuring its accuracy. (For a variety of reasons, the business analyst played only a minor role in creating the functional specifications documents during the Architecture Phase.)
In the Architecture Phase, the functional specifications documents proved crucial in preventing scope creep by explicitly identifying the site's major functionality at a high level and defining such processes as the opportunity posting lifecycle and new client organization registration. I repeated hefted the documents at meetings and said things like, "Sorry, but there is no use case to support that feature." Or, "We already have that feature documented." Or, "The use case describes the process as X-Y-Z, so that's how we need to proceed, or we need to modify the documents."
About midway through the Construction Phase, the documents became crucial for the Quality Assurance testing team. The lower level interaction specifications and system requirements were mostly captured in Notes pages with each of the wireframes, so the development team relied on this document less than may be typical on many other kinds of projects.
Sample
Actor Description
In UML, an "actor" is any agent that interacts with the target system, such as humans or even other computer systems, databases, etc. In the case of humans, a user can take on different actor roles depending on what his or her goal is at any given moment for interacting with the web site. So "actors" are like when you were a kid and you asked your uncle Will what he does at the office. He probably responded that he wears a number of different "hats:" sometimes he was a manager, sometimes he was a secretary, and sometimes he was a bookkeeper, depending on the needs of the moment.
For example, in the E-Marketplace actor description below, Karen works at Company X as a new business development officer. She takes on the Member Analyst role when she uses the web site to look for potential business partnership opportunities. A few minutes into using the site, a colleague, Jack, might call her and ask her to increase his level of site privileges because the organization has also entrusted her with the responsibility of managing their user population. We say Karen then temporarily adopts the Master User role when she goes into the user account management part of the site to access Jack's account and make the changes.
Actor: Member Analyst Description
The Member Master User may assign Member Analyst privileges. Member Analysts are often involved in the business case evaluations of business partnership opportunities. As a result, a Member Analyst may specifically:
- view any business partnership opportunity posting submitted by another member organization;
- view any public organization profiles;
- set user preferences for eAgent,
- conduct searches and save favorite searches,
- save and manage business partnership opportunity postings and organization profiles to their E-Marketplace user Portfolio,
- view messages sent to their E-Marketplace Inbox.
Sample Use Case
Title: UC-1 Log On to E-Marketplace
Description: A registered user of E-Marketplace must log on prior to using authorized E-Marketplace services. The public E-Marketplace home page will provide a log on area whereby a user enters his/her assigned user ID and password. Upon successful login, the system will display the My E-Marketplace home page that is personalized based on the user's specified preferences and past interactions.
Actors: Posting Viewer, E-Marketplace Analyst
Assumptions
- The user has a valid user ID and password against an active account.
- The user's organization has an active organization account.
System Specifications
- The system checks to ensure a.) the user has valid user ID and password against an active account, and b.) the user's organization has an active organization account.
- When the user leaves E-Marketplace, it will be an implied logout and the current user session will end, whereby further access to E-Marketplace will require re-authentication.
- A
button is present on every page in the My E-Marketplace area. - E-Marketplace will allow up to 3 unsuccessful login attempts for the same user ID within a 30 minute time period before freezing the account associated with the user ID.
Primary Scenario
| User Action | E-Market System Response |
| 1. User enters their user ID and password into a login box on
any public area page and clicks the |
Data Requirements
Controls Needed
The system loads a new page into the window. This is the user's personalized My E-Marketplace homepage. |
| 2. When finished using the site, the user explicitly ends the E-Marketplace usage session by clicking on the logout button. | Data
Requirements
Controls Needed
The system loads a confirmation page of the session's end. |
Alternate Scenarios
- If user enters an invalid user ID and/or password while trying to login, the system returns an error message. The login box is present on the error message page.
- If user forgets the password, user clicks on the "Need help signing in?" link and the system loads a new page into the window containing log in help information.
Business Process Notes
- An authorized E-Marketplace member support representative can manually reset the user's password when asked to do so.
Open Issues
- (An Architecture Phase open issue) What, if any, are the alphanumeric characters which cannot be used in valid user names and passwords, e.g., "\", "%", and "&".
Other Links in this Case Study
- Case Study Introduction
- Actor Description and Use Case (this page)
- Site Map
- Log On Page Flow Diagram
- Wireframe for My E-Marketplace Welcome Page
- Notes for My E-Marketplace Welcome Page
- Wireframe Tracking Sheet
- Privilege Matrix