2021 Re/Action Virtual Showcase

Project Description:

The project is an app for used items exchange and trade that is developed base on the foundation of the local trading model, market needs and software performance for the objective of rapid and effortless trades in the Canadian region. Some 70% of consumers say they are now open to buying used items, and 64 million bought used products last year, Marino claims in the 2020 Resale Report, created with help from third-party research and analytics firm GlobalData. Resale grew 25 times faster than new retail in 2019, a trend not ignored by traditional retailers who are linking up with resellers [1]. Therefore, the project will have a chance to occupy the market share in used item trade and exchange app.

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Project Description:

We are team HyperDev, and we were tasked to design and develop the Indigenous-Bridge iOS mobile platform to allow users to share ideas and get information about the North Bay community. This application will be used by the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Center (NBIFC), a non-profit organization, to provide various services and opportunities to indigenous people.
This application contains features like discussion forums, local events, community news, and job opportunities. In addition, this app offers help to find housing and organization details in the North Bay area. It serves as a digital network between the new residence and the community. It is a social app to connect indigenous youth coming to North Bay from other communities. Along with the app, we also created an admin dashboard to allow Admin users to manage the application’s data.

Our team conducted user research to understand indigenous people’s needs moving to North Bay in this project. We had excellent communication with the client, who presented clear business objectives and showed us lots of support although being non-technical. During technology research and developing the mobile application, we learned more about Amazon Web Services (AWS) and implemented the solution to handle and store the data. As a team, we appreciated the opportunity to work effectively together and gained professional experience by creating a practical mobile solution from scratch for an actual client.

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Project Description:

The Community Paramedic Continuing Medical Education or CPCME app was developed to help community paramedics assess patient health. The mobile app aims to replace the existing paper documentation that community paramedics use, allow them to store the results of their assessments in a centralized database, and allow them to recall previous assessments from that database when attending a patient. Additionally we have developed a web portal to allow for the development of new documentation modules and editing of existing modules. This web portal will also allow for reports of a patient’s assessment to be generated as an Excel sheet that can be shared with other medical services, as well as manage the users of the app.

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Project Description:

Our client Nylene Canada, based in Arnprior, manufactures polymer based products for a variety of applications and markets. The company’s current database is poorly designed and doesn’t conform to database normalization and data integrity principles. Our client has been facing many issues managing product information as their product base grows .

Our project involves redesigning the entire database for the client in MySQL and migrating the existing data to a new schema. There is also a web application in place that allows the client to perform CRUD operations on their database. We are updating the application with additional features giving more control to the client admin users to manage the DB, as well as syncing up the application with the new database design.

The project also involves redesigning and updating the product display page, for Nylene’s customers, to improve search and filtering options if they wish to narrow down the product list based on specific requirements. Another feature being added is a name builder that allows admin users to build a Nylene product name based on the associated brand components. This feature will assist users creating unique names built under a consistent naming schema.

There is a mix of backend and frontend development in this project, however, the major development happens on the database redesign and data migration part making our project database heavy.

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Project Description:

We interviewed fourteen subject matter experts to gain insight into the challenges indigenous students might be faced with when considering studying abroad. From professors, to public servants, to service workers and community representatives, we began to understand that the financial costs of international studies were just the tip of the iceberg.
Looking to studies conducted across Canada. Brazil, New Zealand and Australia and for signs of similar successful outbound mobility programs, we realized that although one size certainly does not fit all, there were some guiding principles for our program to adopt. The first being that for some indigenous students accessing post-secondary education in general might already feel foreign, and that a holistic approach to their support and education would need to be adopted to create a to even begin international studies. This might look like preparatory programs between high school and post-secondary for some, or a more robust Indigenous support Centre and presence on campus for others. The second was the importance of community and a sense of belonging to students. International exchanges in Peru realized it was beneficial for students to travel in pairs and have shared accommodations to stave off the feelings loneliness or isolation that can sometimes come with leaving home. Another common thought we came across to have these programs be offered on a short-term basis, so as not to prevent students from obtaining employment part-time or between terms and so they wouldn’t be far from home for too long.
A generalization of what might make international studies appeal to Indigenous students is impossible but using the guiding principles we’ve laid out with the help of our experts, and working continuously with students, we believe an exciting and successful outbound mobility program can exist in the near future.

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Project Description:

The Powwow E-Learning Project was first conceptualized by Kevin and Bertha Chief, who asked Michel Lacroix to become the creative director for the project. The purpose of the Powwow Project is to provide youth a fun and interactive platform to learn the basics of the Algonquin language. The Color Game is the fourth game to be added to the project.

The Powwow Project E-Learning Color game aims to teach children the Algonquin words for basic colors using an interactive medium. Players drag and drop colors to fill sections of Algonquin artwork and are tasked with completely filling all 3 pieces of art to complete the game. The Algonquin words are learned through a combination of visual and audio feedback given to the player upon selecting a color. They are shown the Algonquin word for the corresponding color, along with its English translation. This is accompanied by an audio byte of the spoken Algonquin word.

The team was tasked with the creation of gameplay and UI assets, which would then be implemented into a code base. After implementing the design assets, we then coded the gameplay and various menu functionalities.

One of the biggest challenges the team faced in the creation of this game was designing for an existing project. The designers needed to give the game a unique look and feel, while still adhering to a stylistic baseline established in previous games. Similarly, the programmers were tasked with learning about and working with a pre-existing code base to ensure consistent functionality of game menu items.

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Project Description:

The PLC project team working with Algonquin College has developed a portable Programable Logic Controller (PLC) unit that will allow students to work on their Programmable Controllers lab work at home without having to always go on campus. It was also designed to work with Modbus communication to allow the device to be used with SCADA systems.

The PLC unit is made up of an Arduino Mega with OpenPLC firmware uploaded to it, lights, switches, and buttons. This allows students to created a ladder diagram project that can be uploaded and simulated on the device.

The PLC unit can also be used with Modbus communication allowing the use of Simply Modbus or pyModbus (Python) to be used to control and read the status of all the inputs and outputs on the unit.

The PLC team has also developed two programs created using Python programming that allows the students to transfer their lab work done on OpenPLC to the Rockwell PLC’s in the Algonquin College lab rooms.

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Project Description:

This project has been part of an initiative to align the world of design with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The purpose of the platform is to create a hub for all types of designers to learn about sustainable design and contribute their work to the global community. Our diverse team of students has worked hard to tackle this project in a short time from multiple angles. The UX team has worked on understanding the client’s goals, wireframing out the website through multiple iterations, and ultimately creating the final structure of the site. The design team has crafted the visual design of the website, which includes branding, colors, iconography, photography, and other visual elements that went on the site. The development team was responsible for setting up the WordPress environment and supporting both the UX and design teams in transforming the site design into a live website prototype. This project will become an important part of WDO and will evolve to become a go-to online space for sustainability resources and content within the design space.

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Project Description:

Bravo team applied Human-Centred Design to improve Temporary Resident Program Delivery (TRPD) by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). More specifically, we focused on the Temporary Resident Permit Application package for student extension of stay in Canada. According to IRCC, a high proportion of the applications are unsuccessful due to incomplete or improper filling of application forms. Thus, this project aimed to minimize and if possible eliminate identified problems responsible for the inaccurate or partial completion of the application forms.

To start with, a focus group discussion was conducted with IRCC officers to help discover insights to the causes of the high application failure rates. This was followed by heuristic analysis and cognitive walkthrough to identify the features in the application packages that are working well and are prone to errors based on a set of form design principles. Thirdly, we conducted interviews with seven users (past study permit extension applicants) and seven subject matter experts (internal and external) to understand the bottlenecks/challenges encountered in completing the application package from your perspective as the applicants. Likewise, the subject matter experts were able to share with the team valuable experience on how to avoid common mistakes and best practices in form design to ensure usability and accessibility by all.

Seven common themes as listed below were identified by analyzing our primary and secondary research.
Difficulty accessing adequate information
Heavy dependency on non-government channels and third parties for support
Information overload
Overwhelmed with the application process
Lack of error prevention and validation
Lack of effective communication
Based on these findings, we created five experience principles that address the needs of our target audience and informed our recommendations to IRCC. The key recommendations are summarized as follow:
Short term:
Use a larger font size and style for headers of each section of the forms and instruction guide.
The information Architecture of the form should be well structured to make an applicant easily navigate and complete the different sections.
Redesign the IRCC instruction guide webpage with better information architecture, and search function to improve information clarity, so that it only takes seconds to find answers (to the applicants’ questions) on the IRCC website.
Create a downloadable user manual containing step by steps with screenshots of how to complete each section of the forms.

Intermediate-term:
Online applications will have autosave functions. Only one section will be shown at a time to reduce cognitive load. Subsequent sections will be shown based on the response to previous sections.

Long term:
Study permit extension application forms are automatically generated from an applicant’s GC account to include information they have previously provided for their study permit application.

Addressing these identified problems with the forms and online instruction guide will yield the desired result of an improved applicant experience and minimize or eliminate common problems responsible for the inaccurate or partial completion of the application forms received by IRCC. The improved version of the forms and instruction guide will contribute to the more efficient processing of applications by IRCC staff.

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Project Description:

This automotive suspension which integrates A.I. is intended to highlight the shortcomings of traditional static and dynamic suspensions while offering an innovative, bleeding edge solution. The fundamental goal of this product is to vastly out-perform traditional suspension setups in road and track applications. The A.I. suspension system will integrate an array of sensors that relays driving condition information, including information about the road ahead, to a central computer on the car that uses artificial intelligence to process the information. It will use that data to make predictive changes to the suspension geometry of the car in order to achieve optimal performance while cornering.

Despite not having a client, our team remained results-oriented throughout the entirety of the development process. Using Scrum and Kanban development methodologies, we managed to stick to our timelines and realize our goals within the expected time period. This allowed us to communicate our progress effectively within the team and with our professors. Eventually, we would like to pitch our idea as a proof of concept to a large-scale automotive manufacturer within the performance sphere (such as McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, Toyota, or Mazda).

During the development cycle of the last 8 months, the team went from having a basic idea as to what artificial intelligence is, all the way to being fully immersed in the development of our own neural networks and the management of large datasets.

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