CS160 Project List, Fall 2007

Here is the list of team projects for CS160, Fall 2007. CS160 is an undergraduate introduction to Human-Computer Interaction class that culminates in a team project. Clicking on the project name will open the project poster used in the demo session on November 13, 2007. Links for the final presentation slides and final demo video are also provided (might need to download the TechSmith Screen Capture (TSCC) decoder to view some of the videos).

AutoClub

Mark Movida, Vi Cung, Ka Her, Gleb Podkolzin

AutoClub is a Facebook application that is centered on cars. Its target users will range from car enthusiasts to people with merely some interest in cars. It is aimed to be the central hub for everything that is related to automobiles on Facebook and it will connect users that share this common interest. It is intended to be an application that is informative, useful, easy to use, and fun. Users of the application will be able to:

Final presentation

Demo videos: Add event, review car, browse car, car profile, attend event, search car

Best Eats

Aleskey Sherman, Danielle Cassley, Jennifer Kelly, Yuly Tenorio

Best Eats is a Facebook application cataloging restaurants along with their reviews. The application will give users the ability to share their opinions on restaurants as well as see the opinions of others. By using the Facebook platform, this application can leverage the social context of people you trust to increase the reliability of restaurant reviews.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

Blurbs

Matt Finifter, Jonathan Hung, Stephen Kekicheff, Jennifer L. Tran

Blurbs is an application dedicated to allowing Facebook users to seek additional information and to provide elaboration on material that is posted on any visible profile. When a Facebook user peruses the profile of a friend or another Facebook member, who is not yet a friend, the user may encounter a topic of interest that is listed within that person’s profile. He or she may like an elaboration as to what the topic entails and how it relates to this person. Currently, Facebook only offers the option of messaging and wall posts for one user to request this information from another. As for providing a medium for expression, users are limited to elaborate on interests either directly within their profile or through a note. Blurbs will provide a system specifically designed to enable the curious user to request information from another Facebook user. The user receiving this request may or may not decide to provide an elaboration on the subject of the request. Blurbs will also make it possible for a user, who is already familiar with the topic, to elaborate on that topic, even though it may originally appear on the profile of another Facebook member.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

Comic avatar

Keny Fan, Nikita Schvachko, Sami Eljabali, Simant Goyal

Our project focuses on promoting the continued usage of the Facebook platform. Our application allows users to design a personalized Comic Avatar in their profile. This Avatar will be composed of a head, body, and tail at the user’s discretion and it will grow accordingly based on the user’s involvement with their own profiles. As each user writes/receives wall posts/messages, adds photos, or gets tagged in photos, our application keeps track of these updates and converts it into a form of “experience” for the Avatar. Greater experience means greater growth for the Avatar and greater rewards for the user. When the Avatars are strong enough, they would be able to battle other Avatars, too. The aim of our application is to make the Avatar an indicator of how active a user is on Facebook.

         

          Final presentation

          Demo video

 

DrawIt

Crystal Chang, Mindy Lue, Jacy Li, Jacqueline Takeshita

The DrawIt application brings the ever popular Pictionary game to Facebook, but without the time constraint. As with other game applications, DrawIt brings together a wide variety of people on a common ground. Artists can put as much or as little effort as they’d like into their work, and other users have the opportunity to take a guess at what the prompt word was. DrawIt provides a way for users to compete with each other while showing off their artistic skills.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

Happy Birthday

Suming Chen, John Hwang, Damandip Sanghera

Our application is designed to create new ways of saying “Happy Birthday” to someone over Facebook. With the advent of the Web 2.0 era and numerous social networking websites, it seems likely that every internet user will have many acquaintances to wish “Happy Birthday” to online. Currently, most Facebook users will just leave a comment on their friend’s wall to communicate their well wishes. Most of the comments are trivial, near worthless comments like “Happy Birthday {Friend’s Name}.” The current messaging system does not allow a group of people to give a greeting to one person. Also, the current system does not allow for any personalization of the message in terms of visual and creative expression. The inability to tie in social networking with a birthday greeting is the main reason for the development of this project. Our proposal is to create an application where the user can gather a group of friends and collaborate on a birthday card. There will be many options dealing with customization of the greeting card. We will enable users to insert pictures, text, and movies into their greeting cards.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

JobFair

John Golding, Jakub Fiedorowicz, Samuel Zats

Our application is designed to revolutionize facebook through the integration of academic and professional connections. The application will not only facilitate the full-time career job hunt but also provide a resource for both internship and research positions. Currently, the process can often be long, tedious, and for many, overwhelming. There are multiple methods to accomplish the task but none provide a single consolidated resource which caters to both the user and employer within an easy-to-use solution. The user will be able to post their resume, post a professional profile, and even allow their original profile information to be shown. Privacy settings will be key in order to satisfy and guarantee safety for the user. Employers and recruiters will be able to similarly create both job profiles and company profiles. On either the employee profile or the company profile, there will be room for discussion threads as well. Dual-sided searching for positions or interested job-seekers will access profile information to match the user’s personal interest and the specification of the positions available.

          Final presentation

Pyramid communicatons hub

Chris Alvarado-Dryden, Levi Chang, Matthew Davis, Jenny Li

There are many forms of communication in use by people, Facebook being only one. Users need to simplify communication between friends so they can more easily communicate and socialize. A way to make this work is to have a central hub for people to go to communicate in all forms including phone, e-mail, and other methods: Facebook can be this central hub. Users can keep their contact information private while still letting their friends contact them. As a side benefit, if friends are in a situation where they are difficult to contact and the friend doesn’t remember your contact information (maybe they lost their phone can’t remember your phone number or email, etc.), communication will be much easier.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

Size Me Up

Nam Nguyen, Jeremy Tzeng, Sherry Hung, Alex Trofimov

Size Me Up is a rating application that allows users to rate others and be rated in certain predefined categories such as attractiveness, reliability, intelligence, or sense of humor. In addition, users will also be able to add their own categories that they want to be rated on up to ten categories per user. All ratings will be made anonymous or the user may choose to disclose their identity. All Facebook users can rate their friends who have the application added to their profile without adding Size Me Up to their own profile. In the user’s profile, there will be a profile box displaying a chart of some sort based on the user’s rating in his or her categories. Additionally, there will be rankings of the top ranked users in different networks or amongst one’s friends. There will also be privacy controls that a user can use to opt in or out of the global ranking system. If a user is the most attractive, reliable, etc. person within their network or group of friends, a badge on the profile box will be given to display this honor.

Tag your friends

Fan li, Abhishek Asthana, Dylan Caldwell, Nick Mulrean

People like to categorize things, but there's no way to categorize your friends and interact with them in groups. This application will allow users to tag your friends and group them based on common attributes, such as "football fanatic." It will also create ways for users to interact with their groups, ie. send a message to all "football fanatics" and “coffee addicts” to invite the right set of friends to celebrate a football victory at the local Starbucks.

Travelogue

Lahini Arunachalam, Nan Yu, Fred Kang, Eric Peng

Traveling is a social experience that involves collaboration in planning before the trip takes place as well as sharing experiences after the trip has occurred. The application we are building for facebook addresses both of these areas, and users will ideally use it for both day-trips as well as long-term trips. Users have the ability to create trips using a standard “create trip” page that will have features to invite friends as well as gauge each person’s interest in taking the trip. Once people have been invited, the person creating the trip as well as the invitees will be able to create and collaboratively edit itineraries (including travel plans, where to go once reaching the destination, etc.) and people not going on the trip (or whomever the creator gave permission to view the event) will be able to make comments on these plans. Once the trip has taken place, users can add photos to the trip album and create blog-like posts grouped by destination. Photos can be linked to blog entries and vice versa. Viewers of the trip will be able to make comments on these shared details as well. The main premise behind our application will be collaborative planning and sharing in an open forum.

          Final presentation

          Demo video

 

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