Abstract

This project demonstrates a prototype for an intelligent user interface for an Online Shopping Assistant coded using Visual Basic 6, Oracle, and MS SAPI SDK on Windows NT environment. The purpose of this project is to explore state of the art technology to build a simple, functionally elegant, intelligent user interface to make software easy to use. This project has some unique features which differentiate it from other online shopping tools. The speech enabled GUI can response to user action accordingly and can give comments and recommendations to the user about a particular product. It has three language versions, English, French, and Chinese. Speech is only in English because the Microsoft speech engine has only an English version. It supports heterogeneous databases and has hyperlink features to link the image catalogue to a particular web site. The goal of this project is make the catalogue style online shopping enjoyable and retain the attention of potential consumers. This report presents the architectural design of the COSA system, the, design and implementation of client part GUI and server part databases. The success of most software is determined by its GUI, COSA system is no exemption. When designing and implementing COSA, a great deal of effort is focused on its usability and usability testing. Finally, future work related to COSA is presented.