SE+CS Capstone Projects, Manual Index

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User Traction

Projects that came to Symposium Day with many users. It takes a lot of effort to build a user base. It also requires having software that works early on, and adding features as you go.

Detailed report: https://ecesvn.uwaterloo.ca/courses/se_capstone/handbook/abstracts/indices/user-traction-HCW2021.pdf

• 2019 Hive/SyncUp
  • peer-mentoring match-up
  • partnered with EngSoc
• 2017 Dynalist.io
  • An app+website for shared, hierarchical lists.
  • Successful startup that is now the fulltime career of several of the founders.
• 2016 Kaze/LoLPredict
  • League of Legends analysis tool
  • 8K total users
  • 200K total requests served
• 2016 Snugly
  • consulting project (student-founded consulting firm)
• 2014 RedCoconut/UWFlow
  • Made extensive user recruiting efforts, in partnership with students from outside class.
  • Now used by almost all UW students.
  • Continues to be maintained by SE Society.
• 2013 MyTopFans
  • A Facebook app/plugin that ranks your friends profiles by how much they interact with your profile.
  • Already had thousands of users before FYDP began.

Medical

• 2020
  • TrakTab:
    • A smart pillbox that tracks if the patient is taking their medication and communicates with family members.
    • Won an Esch Award for entrepreneurship.
• 2019
  • LuminousLabs
    • Medical clinic waiting list app.
    • Did a good job reaching out to clinic owners initially.
• 2018
  • Cardio/iExamine:
    • app for teaching medical school students
    • in collaboration with doctors at Harvard Medical School
  • Innovare/ChemoTracker
    • app for patients to track their chemotherapy experience
    • in collaboration with UW School of Pharmacy
  • Lighthouse
    • chatbot for automated referrals
    • in collaboration with the SHORE Centre in KW

Data Synchronization

Data synchronization/transfer between machines is a common technical concern, and has even been the primary technical focus of several projects.

• Jellyfish 2021
• Raven Lich 2020 (Habitica)
• Lightly 2018 (Tandem)
• Dynalist 2017
• Speculative Execution 2017
• HiveMind 2013
• Collin Fair's SE499 Project
  • Secure and robust health record storage and synchronization
  • In collaboration with Sana.MIT.edu
  • Deployed at medical sites around the world
  • https://ecesvn.uwaterloo.ca/courses/se_capstone/handbook/docs/499/CollinFair-SE499.pdf

Open-Source File Synchronization Tools

These have interesting algorithms that you can study.

• Rsync
  • Transfers only changed parts of a file from source machine to destination machine.
  • Assumes changes only happen on source machine.
  • Part of all common Linux distributions.
  • Subject of Andrew Trigdell's PhD dissertation.
  • https://rsync.samba.org/~tridge/phd_thesis.pdf
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync
• Unison
  • Like Rsync, but bidirectional: assumes changes can happen on both machines.
  • Available on all common Linux distributions.
  • Subject of several research papers.
  • https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/index.shtml#File%20Synchronization
• Mutagen
  • Like Unison, but a bit newer. Watches the file system for changes.
  • https://mutagen.io/documentation/synchronization