Software Engineering | We should really make things people will use

We were asked to list down ideas of projects we would like to do for our Software Engineering course today. This course is one of the most important courses of all the ones we take in the 4 years that we are here. The basic idea behind the course is to give students a real life experience of making a software from scratch, working in groups (10ish per group), and developing a product that will be used in the real world.

Sadly, of all 30 projects developed by the 300 students every year, I have not heard of any one actually being implemented and used. They're made and forgotten, and the course doesnt hold the value it should. Also, there is no website/page listing all projects batchwise, developed till date.

I do not want to make another flipkart/food delivery/car rental app, that the previous batches have been making for years. I want to make a software people will actually use. The ideas listed may seem simple from the outside, but the devil is always in the details. Plus, these ideas will actually be used, and will give insights into various human behaviour and habits.

List of ideas for Software Engineering:

#1

A submission platform for the university.

We are required to send emails with appropriate nomenclature to a specific email address (usually created by the TAs) who then have to download all the files, and go through them one by one. Out of all 300 students, I am sure at least 10 make a mistake in nomenclature of the subject and the attached files.

Problems solved using this:

1. [Deadline] The issue of meeting the deadline. You can only submit before the deadline. Each courses’ professor can put up a new submission deadline for an assignment, and the submission window remains open only till then.
2. [Nomenclature] The uploaded files will have the required nomenclature specified by the professor by default.
3. [Originality Checker] All files uploaded by the students will get saved to a common database where analysis to test plagiarism, document length and similarity between submission can be tested.

#2

An Online Univ Noticeboard.

My father told me how his university had a brilliant (offline) super huge noticeboard that students and professors would use to communicate to the masses. Now, the quickest way to reach out to a large number of people is the internet.

Create a noticeboard that professors and students can use to communicate, having different groups/hashtags (much like Slack) where set of authenticated users can post.

Say a professor wants to let his students know that his class stands cancelled, or that a particular file/assignment has been uploaded to the intranet. The quickest way to do so is to put it up on his noticeboard wall, and the students following his course/the professor will get notifications for the same. Another use case is, say the director/admin wants to send out an important message.

Univ updates, like the recent MOU with Univ of Swaziland or other such information that students should know can be put up there.

Another use case is say our cultural festival, Synapse. Regular updates of what is happening/is to happen can be pushed like twitter updates.

Problems solved using this:

1. [Push Updates/Urgent Reminders]
   Can be used by directors/professors/groups(debate,football,drama,music etc)
2. [Webmail Replacement]
   Because it just isn’t being used the way it should.
3. [Transparency]
   The univ can let students know of the updates in college, introduction to new policies, or professors. Now you may ask why this isn’t done over webmail. Read point #2.

#3

Watchman-Gate Entry

A simple application that even the watchmen can use and understand to replace the notebooks used to do in/out entries at the gate.

Now this isn’t all that easy. Making technology that can be understood and used by watchmen is a task. The developers of such an interface will understand what is like to design and make an application that can be used and understood by both, Hindi/Gujarati watchmen and speaking tech savvy students.

Problems solved

1. [No fake entries]
   I almost always mark myself as Santa Singh when the watchmen ask me to do an out-entry while leaving campus. Though I know they ask us to do an out entry to take care of students, making sure they know if the student was inside or outside the univ in case of an emergency, filling up that row simply makes no sense.
2. [Technology]
   We’re a technology institute. Shouldn’t we use technology to make our lives easier?

#4

Food Counter Application

An application for food counters to keep a track of how much they are selling.

I asked the owner of the Reliance Store in the Men Hor how he keeps track of how much he selling, and how he figures out how much of which product he should order in the next batch of bulk order. After discussing the possibilities of how he could keep a track, he said the easiest would be an application that captures the QR code every time it is sold, just as in a proper supermart.

Now think of such an application being used in every small shop of every city. If there are actual insights that can be provided by using the application that serve a purpose to these shops, this app could be phenomenal.

Insights

1. [How much food to make]
   When data really starts to flourish, the counters can decide how much food to make, instead of throwing away extra food that wasn’t bought everyday.
2. [Student eating habits]
   The univ can really understand the students eating habits. This way they can understand how much a student really spends per day on food(instead of claiming DA students spend Rs 120 on food), and how many times they eat in the cafe. They can also analyze how nutritious our diet really is.

#5

Hogger’s Den

Similar to the food counter application, I talked to the Hogger’s Den owner of how he would like to replace the existing way he takes orders. Currently, he writes all orders on a notebook and scratches them out when finished.

This is another real world problem, right outside our university, that can be easily addressed with technology. Now this may seem like an easy application from the outside, as it is just another billing software. But the devil is always in the details, and only those that truly understand the challenges he faces while taking orders will know how to craft a software to make his life easier.

#6

Attendance

Now this isn’t a purely software project, but is something that every professor would love to have, and students would absolutely hate. But a group of 10 people working for one semester to solve this real world problem would surely be able to come up with an ingenious solution.

#7

The Car Drivers Problem.

This, or a similar project of this sort has been addressed by previous batches. But there is a real client that desperately needs a solution to this.

My father uses a driver hiring facility, where he hires a driver for a particular day, or specific time. The owner of the entire company that provides this service has 80 drivers under him, and the poor man is always on the phone, either taking calls from clients, like my father, or calling drivers, informing them of their duty. He uses an excel file to keep a track of all free drivers, and knows approximately which driver will be free when, and where in the city he will be.

We really can make his life easier with a good software that’ll help him send alerts to his drivers, and receive bookings from people.

#8

Whatsapp Sentiment Analysis

I have a thing for word and text analysis. I like analyzing data and gaining insights with graphs and theories by looking at numbers and data. Sentiment analysis of various social media, especially your whatsapp messages. Basically like GMail Meter, but for Whatsapp.