CAPSTONE PROPOSAL: DriveDiary 1

Capstone Proposal: DriveDiary

CST489: Capstone Project Planning

Jeremiah McGrath, Christopher McMichael

Advisor: Luma Rinaldi

Summer 2024
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Executive Summary

The project strives to allow drivers to accurately track their vehicle’s expenses, to address

the widespread lack of proper vehicle maintenance, and to enable sharing ownership experiences

between drivers. Almost everyone relies on some form of transportation, yet many neglect to

keep track of essential maintenance and fuel usage. Failure to maintain a vehicle can lead to

expensive repairs and could compromise a vehicle's safety.

By offering users the ability to log expenses, our platform will provide valuable insight

on the cost of vehicle ownership while also serving as a record of maintenance history. This is

crucial as basic maintenance tasks, such as oil changes and filter replacements are often

completed late or not at all, leading to potential mechanical issues. Additionally our platform will

allow users to access curated entries from other users, allowing them to potentially foresee

expenses for their vehicle and to learn from another user's experience. Beyond this, a system of

reminders and events will keep users updated on recommended maintenance before a costly

failure forces them to act, which could also help keep costs down, considering that “77% of

repair shops estimate their customers … could save $100 or more per visit if they properly

maintained their vehicles” (AAA).

We aim to target both average drivers and enthusiasts, providing a simplistic interface for

casual users who want to simply track their expenses, while offering detailed tracking options for

DIY mechanics who need to see their past and future maintenance. The anticipated outcome is an

app that is easy to use, functional, and enables users to make informed decisions regarding their

vehicles, ultimately helping them keep their vehicles running better, longer. In essence, our goal

is to simplify the process of understanding and managing vehicle expenses – placing drivers in a

position of confidence rather than uncertainty.

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Table of Contents

Introduction/Background 4

Project Name and Description 4

Problem and/or Issue in Technology 4

Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in Technology 4

Environmental Scan/Literature Review 4

Stakeholders 5

Ethical Considerations 6

Legal Considerations 6

Project Goals and Objective 7

Final Deliverables 7

Approach / Methodology 7

Timeline / Resources 7

Timeline 7

Resources Needed 7

Platform 7

Risks and Dependencies 7

Risks 7

Dependencies 7

Testing Plan 7

Members / Division of Responsibility 7

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References 7

Introduction/Background

Project Name and Description

DriveDiary is a web application designed to assist users in efficiently managing their

vehicle expenses and maintenance records. It aims to provide a centralized platform for users to

store information about their vehicle costs and access logs from other users. This application is

intended for everyone who owns a car. Its significance lies in addressing the common issue of

drivers neglecting to track their vehicle expenses, which can lead to uninformed decisions and a

lack of awareness regarding the true cost of vehicle ownership.

Problem and/or Issue in Technology

Many individuals fail to keep track of their vehicle’s service history, maintenance needs,

and other metrics which often leads to a sense of uncertainty in a vehicle's performance, health,

and needs. 62% of repair shops state that more than half of the vehicles they service are behind

on maintenance (AAA). Without a system that enables users to monitor these metrics,

individuals may overlook critical maintenance tasks, leading to potential safety hazards and

costly repairs down the line.

Solution to the Problem and/or Issue in Technology

DriveDiary offers users the ability to monitor their expenses, maintenance schedules,

estimated costs, and access insights from other users with similar vehicles. The features which

enable comprehensive data logging, automated reminders, and readable data visualization will

allow users to stay up-to-date on what their vehicle needs throughout its service life. Overall,

DriveDiary aims to empower users to better manage their vehicles by providing an approachable

yet advanced platform that encompasses all aspects of vehicle ownership.

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Environmental Scan/Literature Review

One of the most popular vehicle management applications is Fuelio. It is a mobile

application intended to help users track their vehicle-related expenses and fuel consumption.

Users can log details such as fuel refills, maintenance costs, and other expenses related to their

vehicles (Fuelio). The application offers analytics and reports, as well as providing addresses and

pricing information for nearby fuel stations.

Fuelly is another online platform that aims to help users track their fuel consumption and

vehicle-related expenses. Users can log their fuel fill-ups and record maintenance activities. They

enter fuel prices, odometer readings, and trip details. They are then provided reports and insights

into their driving habits and fuel consumption patterns (Fuelly). Users can also refer to the web

based platform to view the fuel consumption metrics that other users got with any specific

vehicle.

DriveDiary aims to differentiate itself by providing a tool that helps manage all of the

aspects about owning a vehicle and, most importantly, enabling collaboration among users,

empowering them to learn from one another's experiences. While existing applications provide

valuable tracking features for simple metrics, they often lack robust features for tracking any

metrics beyond fuel usage, and the ability for users to share useful information.

Stakeholders

The two stakeholders our project has are the users and the developers. Our target user

base is wide in scope, as it includes anyone who owns a vehicle. We can further break this user

base into subcategories for greater clarity, those being average drivers and more advanced users.

Average drivers seek to gain a tool they can easily operate to log their vehicles expenses and

make use of reminders to maintain a history of more regular maintenance. Advanced users seek
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to gain a tool to keep more detailed logs of work they have put into their vehicles, while also

being able to view other users’ logs to learn from one another's experiences with similar

vehicles. This project’s second set of stakeholders are the developers, who seek to gain

professional experience and a potential income source from the development of this project.

Ethical Considerations

Two ethical considerations to be had are the security of users’ personal information, and

the integrity of appropriate content shared within the DriveDiary platform. To address ethical

concerns, DriveDiary will include features such as a “private notes” section to allow users to

securely store sensitive information on a log they do not wish to share with the community.

Additionally, measures will be implemented to prevent the posting of inappropriate content, such

as implementing a bad words filter and the ability for users to report posts that slip through our

filters. These steps aim to ensure user privacy and maintain a positive and respectful

environment within the DriveDiary community.

Legal Considerations

DriveDiary only has a few legal considerations regarding its development, these being

the adherence to copyright laws and proper application of fair use guidelines for the external

APIs that we will be utilizing. During the planning phase, we have made a decent effort to verify

that the name “DriveDiary” hasn’t already been used or copyrighted in our product category.

Furthermore, the external APIs that we plan to use do not have any restrictions against their use

in an academic setting — although this concern will be revisited if we develop the project further

by implementing monetization through advertising, as the external APIs would then be utilized

for commercial purposes.

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Project Goals and Objective

Goals

release a live, public facing version of our web application that can be used freely

implement a front-end that works on most common device screens

Objectives

enable users to save and view gas, maintenance, and cost metrics for vehicles

enable users to share metrics with other users

implement CarMD API to pull vehicle data, including recommended vehicle maintenance

implement Bad Words API to filter profanity from user logs

Final Deliverables

The final deliverable will be the product’s website, which would allow users to create

accounts, log in, and easily manage their vehicles. In addition, users will have the ability to save

and track data relating to maintenance schedules, fuel usage, and repair history. This product

would allow users to share their saved data and experience with other users, in order to help

spread important information for vehicles documented within the application. The planned

outcome for this project is giving users the tools to be more confident and knowledgeable about

their transportation, in order to reduce preventable issues. We hope to see a steadily growing user

base, with a positive user feedback from their experiences.

Approach / Methodology

We plan to take an Agile approach to our development, which can be viewed on our

provided timeline. Ideally, we will have a barebones version of our application running early into

the development cycle, limited to developer usage for real world testing. Utilizing this version,

we plan to minimize any bugs we find while updating the application throughout stages of
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development. We hope that this will allow for a minimal debugging phase. Once the application

is in a safe stage for outside testing, we will contact our testing group. Beyond this, we plan to

keep open communication with our testing group, while making interface and functional changes

to better assist the general user experience.

Timeline / Resources
Timeline

Resources Needed
The outside resources we would need would be API keys for the two APIs we plan to

use, CarMD and Bad Words, as well as access to Amazon Cloud Services. Both of these

resources are paid services. We would also need to secure a domain name to launch the public

facing version of our application. Beyond this, our developmental tools will be free-to-use. These

include Github for version control, and VSCode, Spring Boot, and Postman for development and

testing.

Platform
The application that our project aims to create will be entirely web based. This platform

is one of three where our project would have the ability to reach multiple common users: IOS,

Android, and Web-based. We chose web-based due to how it would help cut down on

implementation time over android development, and to cut out the proprietary nature of the IOS
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development environment. It would also allow our project to reach more users as a single

web-based application can be seen and used by all three platforms, if configured correctly.

Risks and Dependencies

Risks
A significant risk lies in the chosen development cycle strategy. If we utilize an agile

approach, swiftly implementing features and continuously testing throughout, we might

encounter challenges during version changes that necessitate database migration. This process

could prove to be inconvenient, possibly disrupting the development flow.

Dependencies
Our testers’ effectiveness is dependent on us having a live version available for their

access. Their valuable input is crucial for guiding the direction of our development. Additionally,

our reliance on the CarMD API for substantial information introduces a dependency; we must

hope that the API’s terms of use remain unchanged during the development of our application, in

order to avoid disruptions in accessing the vital information that it provides.

Testing Plan
For our testing plan, we will have a few sources throughout development. Prior to

implementation we will test our API calls through Postman and during general development we

will do regular small scope unit testing with separate full system tests for core use cases. Once

we have a stable version we will release it to our testers to use and provide feedback as we

continue to add and tweak features.

Members / Division of Responsibility

Christopher McMichael will lead integration with the CarMD and Bad Words APIs,

deployment through Amazon Web Services, and database design. Jeremiah McGrath will lead
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the front-end development: which includes design with Adobe Illustrator and programming with

HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Beyond this, the backend logic will be developed together.
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References

AAA. (n.d.). Preventative maintenance fact sheet. AAA.com.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Preventive-Maintenance-Fact-Sh

eet.pdf

Fuelio. Fuelio - fuel log, mileage and costs tracker for Android and iOS. (n.d.). https://fuel.io/

Fuelly, L. (n.d.). Fuelly. Track, Share, and Compare your Vehicle. https://www.fuelly.com/