Enabling Customization through Web Development: An Iterative Study of the Dell Computer Corporation Website

1. INTRODUCTION The need for integration of education, practice, and information technology is growing (Lu, Yu, and Liu, 2003). Instructors in Management information systems (MIS) and other disciplines are often encouraged to find ways to assist their students in improving their project development skills in an iterative setting as opposed to just having case studies. With the advancement of the Internet and Web technologies, instructors are not only able to demonstrate real business applications online, but also facilitate and guide students through the process of gathering information, analyzing business cases, testing validity and applicability, and creating meaningful solutions for business organizations. The use of the Internet and Web technologies is quickly becoming an educational given, and an important, yet increasingly viable part of a student's learning environment (Landry, Griffeth, and Hartman, 2006). Therefore, it is very appropriate to have students create a customized website by examining and implementing a real online business application in an electronic commerce (EC) design course. This paper demonstrates a student project to develop a computer website which is similar to Dell Computer Corporation's (Dell) website by allowing customers to build their own computers. 2. THE PROJECT The project was based in a semester-long graduate level EC course taught in the fall of 2006 at a large, Midwestern university. All students enrolled in this course were MIS majors. The lead author of this paper was the course instructor. The project required the students to develop a Web application that would allow potential customers to select a desktop computer and customize it using similar functionality as available on Dell's website. An iterative approach with three rounds of the project's development was adopted. These three rounds development activities were individual project works with the first round assigned to the students after the completion of the first three weeks of the class. 2.1 First Round: Web Application Replication In this round of the project, the students were asked to evaluate a particular EC website, Dell, Inc. (http://www.dell.com), and evaluate a specific computer system, the Dell Dimension E510. Once they evaluated the Dell computer model and had a basic understanding of it, they were asked to design a Web application similar to Dell's that would handle the selection and customization of the Dimension E510 model. The students were instructed that the website they developed in this round of the project was a "first-of-series" prototype to be used as a pilot with more advanced features added in later rounds. It was explained that the prototyping methodology makes it possible to build a functional website more quickly and then add more functionality after the initial prototype had been developed. To do this, the students designed a Web Form in the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to display the basic desktop components including processor, memory, hard drive, CD/DVD drive, operating system, monitor, etc. Figure 1 displays the Web page produced by the students for this round. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Each computer component offered multiple customization options. Those options were implemented using Web Form controls such as radio button and checkbox lists. The students customized the component options by including an "Update" button to allow re-calculation of the computer price once different options were selected. The page was designed using ASP.Net 2.0 technology. ASP.Net 2.0 is the latest server-based technology from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development platform, designed to create interactive and dynamic HTML pages for a website with minimal programming. The students were instructed to use the Microsoft Visual Basic programming language for the ASP page design. One of the biggest advantages of using ASP.Net 2.0 for Web page design is its simplicity. …