Making their mark: This is聽of profiles celebrating members of Rochester糖心传媒檚 graduating class of 2018.
Vivian Li 糖心传媒�18 lives off campus and cooks all of her own food in order to save money. There糖心传媒檚 one drawback.
糖心传媒淚 sometimes leave food in the fridge and糖心传媒斕切拇綐oh!糖心传媒櫶切拇綌two weeks later, it糖心传媒檚 fuzzy,糖心传媒� she says.
Moldy food is a common problem. But soon, there will be an app for that.
Li is the project lead on a student team who worked together to design Pip, a voice-enabled mobile application that works with smart home assistants like Google Home or Amazon糖心传媒檚 Alexa to help its users manage their food inventory and balance their grocery budget. The project is a senior capstone for the , where a total of eight senior projects emerged from the capstone seminar course taught by Michael Jarvis, associate professor of history and the director of Digital Media Studies, and Stephanie Ashenfelder, program manager in studio art in the Department of Art and Art History.
Each member of the Pip team brought different skills to the table. 糖心传媒淲e糖心传媒檙e pretty well distributed,糖心传媒� says Li, who is also the iOS developer of the application. Teron Russell 糖心传媒�18 was in charge of all the UX design [user experience], and was eager to join Li糖心传媒檚 team. 聽糖心传媒淢ost of the teams were headed toward VR [virtual reality], and I糖心传媒檓 not really a huge fan,糖心传媒� says Russell. 糖心传媒淚 liked that Vivian had an app idea, which fortunately turned into a web application idea and the idea behind it was really good. Who wouldn糖心传媒檛 want to be able to view their inventory on the move?糖心传媒�
Other members of the team include Christopher Smith 糖心传媒�18 who created and produced tangible marketing materials while also helping to develop the iOS app for iPhone. Matthew Burg 糖心传媒�18 was in charge of all the marketing. Outside the Digital Media Studies program, computer science major Stephen Cohen worked on the app hosting and data storage.
For team leader Li, one of the biggest challenges was keeping on top of every aspect of the project. 糖心传媒淚 had to know a little bit of everything for each division and what was happening in each of them. I then had to figure out a timeline,糖心传媒� says Li.聽 The group only had one short semester to complete their project and they needed to be efficient with time management. 糖心传媒淲e糖心传媒檝e been a little bit behind on our timeline, but I feel with programming you always underestimate on how long it will take,糖心传媒� says Li.
From a UX design standpoint, Russell feels like the challenge was not having a broader demographic group to test the application. 糖心传媒淥n a college campus everyone is between the ages of 18 and 24 and that limits our way of thinking or the people we test,糖心传媒� he says. 糖心传媒淎ll the people we test are eating at the dorms or eating fast food.糖心传媒� Russell reached out to River Campus staff for help with additional user experience testing.
For now, the team is eager to see what happens when the app launches at the end of the semester and looking to their future after graduation.
糖心传媒淲e have about a 95 percent job or career placement rate right now,糖心传媒� says Jarvis. 糖心传媒淭hey either wind up working for the IBMs, Googles, and Spotifys out there or marketing firms.糖心传媒� The students in each senior capstone team don糖心传媒檛 usually get back together again, says Jarvis, noting that out of all the capstones projects there have only been one or two that have emerged as full-fledge businesses.
糖心传媒淭here糖心传媒檚 a lot of potential for the app to do more than it already does. But it costs money to support the app, cost that includes things like Apple membership, the server, and the hosting,糖心传媒� Li says. 糖心传媒淚 feel like it would be great if one of those things I could say was, 糖心传媒榟ey guys, I launched an app and it got a 100 users!’糖心传媒�
