Sick of forgetting to snag those Pop Tarts when you’re at the bookstore? Don’t sweat it, there’s an app for that. Almost.
Students in Andrea Tartaro’s computer science class spent this past term developing two applications for the iPhone. One group created the GPS Personal Organizer (to remind you to grab those Pop Tarts), while the other made a Union Community Advertising application to help disseminate event news.
“The advertising application was inspired by the hundreds of posters plastered across campus,” said Derek Ohanesian ’12, a computer science major. “There’s so much to do at Union that it’s hard to keep track of it all.”
“The application lets students browse events by title, or by flipping through virtual posters,” he added. “They can RSVP to an event, share the event via e-mail, text messaging or Facebook, and see who else is attending the event. Users can also organize events they are attending to keep better tabs on them.”
The GPS Personal Organizer is meant to fill an existing need as well.
“Our application will use the GPS built into the iPhone to determine where the person is,” said psychology major Michael Lucey ’11. “Then it will check the list of reminders the user has previously entered into the phone to see if the user is near a certain location.”
“For instance, if I need to pick up a package from the mail room, but never remember when I’m at Reamer, I could set up a reminder,” he continued. “Then, the next time I go to Reamer, my cell sends me a quick notification to pick up the package.”
As excited as the students are about their creations, however, the applications themselves weren’t the most important components of the projects.
“This quarter-long project was divided into several assignments that build toward a final product, putting the focus on the design process,” said Tartaro, a visiting assistant professor. “Each assignment reflects an important step in that process, like finding a motivated problem, gathering requirements for a solution to that problem, or testing prototype solutions.”
Ohanesian has enjoyed this aspect of his professor’s approach.
“It’s interesting to take a step back from the programming we do in other computer science courses to focus more on the design of the application,” he said. “In this class, we observed users to identify design opportunities, we wrote requirements analysis to understand the people we were designing for, and we tested a paper prototype with users.”
His classmates in the other group also completed similar tasks that allowed them to gain a deeper understanding of the many different aspects of technology development.
“Before we jumped headlong into this endeavor we wanted to make sure there was a market for the GPS Personal Organizer,” said Lucey, who is minoring in computer science. “The surveys we conducted showed people’s current methods of remembering daily chores were severely lacking. Our surveys also showed a positive reaction to our design, so we went ahead with it.”
Neither application is market-ready or actually approved for use on the iPhone. Even so, conducting this kind of research has helped Tartaro’s students hone skills that will be crucial after they leave Union.
“In the real world, everything for computer science – and all kinds of other design development – is done in teams,” Lucey explained. “Having group projects gives us hands-on experience in dealing with other people who don’t always have the same ideas and goals.”