Here are a few ideas I have thought about, or other instructors have contributed:
Software Application that manages all the activities in a typical restaurant
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Manage waiting lists (reservations may be excluded since it may involve lot more
complexity) and alerting customers when the table is ready.
Interface for "welcome desk" to show current status and graphical view of tables (RED
- OCCUPIED/ORDERED, ORANGE - SERVED, GREEN - AVAILABLE) - customer can
select the table.
Menu over the web/android phone - remote orders - friendly to mobiles - nice pictures
Database to keep track of everything in the backend.
Table configuration data - how many seats in each table, etc.
Server configuration data - name, table assignment
Android or handheld device for servers to alert order is ready
PC screen to show the cooks about pending orders - each screen may show only the
items that are made in that cooking area.
Table can be modeled as state machine IDLE --> OCCUPIED --> ORDERED -->
SERVED --> PAID/TOBOCLEANED --> IDLE
Privacy booths - waiter replaced by touch-screen. Orders can be input using touchscreen. May be, food should be delivered by Robot? :-)
Feel free to dissect this one and add/remove features.
Design a mobile phone application to provide patients with the costs of various
medical procedures, aiding them in selecting the best cost provider.
Medical procedures such as x-rays and MRIs do not have uniform costs across various
providers. In fact, for the same MRI, one provider may charge an amount that is a few
times larger than the amount charged by another provider. Insurers reimburse providers at
different preset rates, the result of a negotiation process between insurers and providers.
More interestingly, the same insurer may reimburse providers at different rates for the
same procedure. This tool should give the patient options in choosing the provider, by
reporting a list of providers, what they charge, and the portion paid by insurance.
A typical scenario where it can be used is the following. A practicing physician recommends
the patient a procedure, say MRI. Usually the physician also indicates the lab where he
expects it to be done. One problem with this rather common approach is the potential
conflict of interests: the physician may have financial interests in the lab (as co-owner,
investor, etc.), have his/her good friends or relatives working at the lab etc. Many labs only
perform the procedures
while the interpretation of the results is done by specialists, often
contracting with a few labs, and charging a standard cost. Thus, the
difference in charged costs stays with the lab performing the procedure.
No matter the recommendation of the physician the patient has the freedom to chose
another provider and should exercise it if the costs are significantly smaller. Instant
availability of nearby providers and the costs charged thus becomes of great interests.
The tool should provide the user an interface to introduce a standard code for the
procedure. It would then search various provider and insurance databases for nearby
providers and costs and list the providers according to a few options that can be selected by
the user, including total cost and patient cost.
It is preferred that the interface is developed for a mobile phone running Android OS.
Lawn Maintenance Services
Andrew is running home based family business of maintaining people's lawns in Dallas area.
Typical customer signs up sometimes in March/April for biweekly lawn mowing service. Most
customers pay $25, except when the lawn is really huge. Customers call in sometime in
October to stop the service as the Fall sets in. Andrew mails out reminders to past
customers around March 1st requesting them to requesting them to sign-up again.
Currently, Andrew performs these activities in ad-hoc manner and do not have good
recording system to figure out which customer is behind in payments.
Customers pay in 3 mechanisms: cash, check, or bill-pay checks directly from the bank.
While most customers do remember to send payments regularly,
overpayment/underpayment issues occur, and sometimes customers do forget to reactivate the bank's bill-pay mechanism. Andrew is worried that he is losing 10% or more of
his income right now, due to such issues. He would like a simple application to keep track of
everything. In addition to various transactions, he would like a simple way to generate a
report of all the customers with outstanding balance above specified limit. He does not want
many 'bells & whistles', particularly if those features will require more of his time. He cannot
afford to spend several hours every day for data entry or maintaining the data.
Andrew's business has grown and there are several crews working every day. They have
moved up in technology too. Each crew has iPhone or Android phone, they would like an
application in their phones to inform remotely after completing the job at each customer's
home. Also, it can tell them which home they should service next. You will need to design
an algorithm to generate schedule based on locations of customers & their “day & time”
preferences.
Grocery Store Application
Check-out operations & inventory control. Additional analysis to improve profitability based
on business criteria.
ANDROID based application (R&D).
This is meant to create a new app or enhance the features of an already existing
ANDROID application.
Students should prepare a survey of the type of services applications available (i.e
video streaming, remote access, etc) and
come out with a new application or a way to enhance already existing.
Some
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find a
thoughts:
Would you like to open your garage using your smart phone? is it doable?
Would you like to open your CAR using your smart phone? is it doable?
For streets and cities, you have GPS, what if you are in a big mall and you want to
specific store? Is it doable?
Games Project
1. The nine-puzzle.
The screen has the following initial format:
^^ ^
324>
517>
698>
That’s 9 text fields and 6 buttons. Pressing one of the “^” buttons
causes that column to rotate upward. Pressing one of the “>” buttons
causes the row to rotate to the right. (Alternatively the rows and columns
could be rotated with finger swipes, like the tumblers in the iPhone. In
which case the arrow buttons will not be needed.)
The object of the game is to sort the numbers into sequence with the fewest
rotations. As an option, there could be an integer text field along the bottom
that shows the minimum number of moves necessary to solve the problem,
both initially and after each user move. Once this works, the numbers could
be replaced with segments of a picture, so the game was like solving a jigsaw
puzzle.
2. Black and White Knights.
The screen begins with a 5 by 5 board covered with images of chess knight
pieces. The center square is empty. Half of the 24 knights are black and half
are white. The player repeatedly touches knights that are a legal knight’s
move away from the currently empty square to cause each one to jump to the
empty square. The objective is to move the knights so that the upper diagonal
12 squares are white and the lower diagonal 12 squares are black and the middle square is
empty:
WWWWW
WWWWB
WW-BB
WBBBB
BBBBB
As options, other moves might be allowed, such as jumping over a piece to get
to the empty square, or sliding one of the pieces adjacent to the empty square into
that square (like the 15 puzzle).
For each of these options other symbols would be used.
As above an integer at the bottom could tell the optimum number of moves
left to solve the puzzle.
3. Balancing Beam
The opening screen shows a beam supported on two triangles:
_______________________
^^
And a series of images of weights with given weight: 1,3,6,10
You have to place the weights onto the beam without it tipping.
On subsequent “levels” the pivot points change and the number of
weights changes. This one might need more development.