Author: jw057

Raypointments

Background

Making appointments contributes an important part of everyone’s schedule. Currently there are so many ways to make appointments — email, google calendar, texting, phone call, etc, but there is no tool available that can unite all these methods and create a centralized place for people to make and manage their appointments. A successful final product of this project should at least be deployed as a service for the Bucknell community (specifically for appointments among faculties and students), and might potentially be extended to more general use later on.

 

Executive Summary

To solve the problem identified above, I propose that the solution should at least be a mobile app so that users can carry the application around to use whenever needed and get push notifications to their phone when an appointment is approaching. In order for users to make appointment through texting and phone calls, the application should also be able to access contacts, call logs, and messages, and be able to process and analyze natural language to extract appointment related information from text messages and emails, or even from voice queries if possible. On the other hand, the application should also support appointment reminder in the forms of text, email, and/or phone calls to make it user-friendly for people who are used to these methods of communication. In addition to centralizing other existing methods for appointment making, this application should also allow in-app appointment making. As a appointment making application, popularity is very important, as people will only using it if the parties they are making appointment with are also using the same application. Therefore, intensive research is needed on how to attract users and on in-demand features that existing tools are missing.

 

Viability Analysis

The first stage of this project will be serving the Bucknell community only. This means that it needs to integrate features that are specifically targeted to Bucknell students and faculty members in order to gain attention from our potential users. This is difficult and requires lots of research work to find useful features that we could include in addition to what Google Calendar is already providing.

 

Risks and Rewards

Risk for developing an appointment making application is obvious and stated above, that is the application might not achieve what we planned for it if not many people are using it. It might be easier to promote the Bucknell community to use it given that it is developed by Bucknell students, but it is even harder if we enter the public market and are competing with existing appointment making application like Google Calendar. The rewards are also obvious. If this application gained popularity in the Bucknell community, then it can make students’ and professors’ lives much easier by unifying appointment making and simplifying appointments management so that no one will ever miss an appointment again.

 

Closing

In summary, this application will at least be a mobile app that incorporates as many appointment making methods as possible to provide the Bucknell community a more convenient way to make and manage appointments. At this stage, this project will aid the Bucknell community in a positive way and the risk level remains low. If the application should gain popularity among Bucknell students and faculties, we would then be able to move on to target the public.

 

Trip Sharing Platform

Background

This project was raised initially to solve the problem of tracking national parks that the client has visited. Later on the client expended the problem to a trip sharing platform through which users can create, share, and complete lists of places to visit and is not limited to national parks any more. The final deliverable should be a fully functional platform that can be used to log and share places as well as potentially creating lists of places for users to interact and compete with each other.

 

Executive Summary

To solve the problem identified above, I propose that the solution should at least be a mobile app, and ideally also a web application to complement the mobile version. The mobile app should include location service to enable users to check in at different places. The app also need to integrate Google Maps and utilizes its APIs to retrieve popular places, as well as allowing users to login through their Facebook and/or Gmail accounts so that they can interact with their friends much easier. The mobile version is necessary because users need to check-in at places they visit, and we cannot expect them to bring a laptop wherever they go. The web application can complement the mobile app to provide a better exploring and viewing experience of trips and lists created by others. The basic structure of this application for both the mobile end and the web will include: a database for users’ account information, back-end algorithms to display the most relevant places/lists, as well as a clean and user-friendly front-end interface that can attract users as a new application.

 

Viability Analysis

This project will be built from scratch, meaning that as a team we need to decide on what languages and frameworks to use, and thus must keep in mind the current knowledge of all team members as well as the learning curve of learning new stuff. This is especially relevant to this project since we might need to develop on Android, iOS, and web, and this can be challenging. I am experienced in Android and web development, but not with iOS. Even though picking up Swift does not seems to be too difficult right now, we still need to keep in mind the time that is required for learning a new language.

 

Risks and Rewards

Currently there is no existing way to track and share places visited. This application can promote the travelling industry as travelling can become more rewarding for some people when they have a checklist to complete or when they are competing with someone else. This application, if in good use, can also give visitors to a local village good recommendations on what are the good attractions and/or restaurants to visit. This can lead to risks when places are trying to advertise through this app, and this risk can be minimized by creating a rating system for places lists and users who are publishing the lists, and by implementing an algorithm that recommends valuable lists wisely.

 

Closing

Overall, this is a fantastic idea and is reasonable to implement given the time and resources constraints. With the proposed features (places logging and sharing, list creating, etc) and external resources (Google Maps, Facebook, Google account) integrated, I can see a successful product that nothing else in the market has in common.

Excurvant UI/UX

Background

Excurvant is a start-up company trying to deliver the best online social travel community that combines discovering, booking, and sharing. Excurvant currently has a website set up but still requires UI/UX refinements. The problem this project is solving is to provide a better UI/UX as well as better sharing methods and personalized experience. This project will be built on their existing platform and the final deliverable will be user-friendly and personalized, and satisfies other potential requirements of Excurvant.

 

Executive Summary

Currently it is unclear to me how much work Excurvant has already put into making the existing website. Base on what I can see is up and running, it still requires significant amount of back-end development work other than Excurvant’s proposed UI improvements. From the back-end perspective, I propose that we will need a database that can hold user profile, uploaded media, and personalized settings. From the front-end perspective, we need to work on creating user-friendly designs for all features that the platform will offer, as well as performing testings internally and externally to gather user feedbacks and further improve our design. Lastly, our design should be customizable so that each user can have different and personalized experience while using the platform.

 

Viability Analysis

As mentioned in the client’s proposal, the existing website was built with Node.js. I believe that this is the right framework for this project as this is supposed to be a data-driven web application that requires real-time interactions between the front-end and the server. I have learned some Node.js in my previous internship and thus should be able to pick it up and dive into development soon. However, I am still expecting some difficulties in working with databases, keeping user data secure and private, as well as the scalability of the application when more and more people start using it. In addition, choosing the most appropriate deployment platform will require some research and learning before taking the action.

 

Risks and Rewards

Building product for a start-up company is a great responsibility and also a rewarding process. If the project is a success, then it will be delivered to the public and is going to provide people a new way to travel and share. However, a minor mistake in the product such as privacy issue or data losses can affect user experience and might even cause significant consequences on the company’s reputation.

 

Closing

Overall, I think the risks and difficulties can be limited to an accepted level and the positive aspects are dominant. The idea behind this project is unique, and we currently do not have a platform that does the exact same thing. This application will provide travellers a new way to share and communicate with each other, and thus will have a large impact on the market.