Reaction All Years

Project Description:

Every year, changes to the curriculum for courses at Algonquin College are made or considered. Feedback from students, Algonquin faculty members, and industry professionals is used to determine what changes should be made to improve each course. The client has asked for a web application that allows users to share their opinions and have the related faculty members for each course review the feedback. At the end of term, students at Algonquin may access the web application for a limited period and leave a review on courses that they have successfully completed. Throughout each year, Algonquin staff members may also leave reviews on relevant courses and input comments on behalf of industry professionals’ recommendations.

To fulfill the requirements, a web application was developed using Python for the back end, Django as a web framework, MySQL for database connection, and React for the front-end UI components. Only Algonquin staff and students may use this application with their algonquinlive.com email addresses. The project is ongoing and, in the future, single sign-on (SSO) will be integrated with Algonquin systems. Currently the application features a sign-up feature that requires users to sign up with an algonquinlive.com email address. Users may sign up as either staff or students and once they are registered, they may select a course that is relevant to them. Both staff and students may leave reviews and staff have the additional option to view all reviews for courses relevant to them. The staff review page provides a summary of the reviews left for courses and allows staff members to scroll through a list of user comments.

By taking on this project, the team has learned about many technologies new to them and how to work in a group development environment. None of the team was especially proficient with any of the technologies used to develop the project however, team members conducted research, experimented with code, and successfully implemented many working features. In addition, the team followed Agile software development methodologies and realized the many benefits of incremental development of working prototypes over the traditional waterfall development model.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Our team has worked remotely with a few local non-profit organizations to accelerate the slide into change.

The purpose of the Humans of ImpAct website is to curate stories about social enterprises as told by students from the member organizations of Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan).
For the Reducing Barriers to Inclusive Access project, we created a website for the community that shares initiatives that reduce barriers to inclusive access on campus and in the community.
The Ottawa Community Benefits Network is a network of various community, service, and labour groups dedicated to building healthy, diverse, and inclusive communities across Ottawa. We created a website for them: https://ottawacommunitybenefits.ca/.
For Rideau Rockliffe CRC, we are working on multiple tasks, from helping them develop their content to developing their social media plan for a new website launch. Our team will also help them in developing a platform for managing their backend operations.
For the Predatory Journals Project, our team has redesigned the website for Ottawa Hospital Research Institute’s Journalology team: http://www.ohri.ca/journalology/one-stop-shop-predatory-journals.
We crafted colourful zoom backgrounds for the National Children’s Botanical Garden of Canada, solved issues with the WordPress site, and established a Motion Graphic logo.

With the generous support of ICTC and IBM, we, as students, can gain valuable experience all while making contributions to the social sector in our community here in Ottawa. By supporting one, we support many. We are strong like a drum, eager like a violin, and innovative like the electric guitar. We inspire each other to compose great work. We are in tune with the world around us. We adapt our individual ways to create harmony. And we celebrate our victories triumphantly with emoji reactions over Zoom. We are SLiDE.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Explaining a bit about our client; AetherWind Technologies is a company which helps other companies develop a market strategy for their product. They specialize in wireless device certifications and work with the latest changes in the FCC and Industry Canada. The purpose of this project is to create a web app which allows clients of Aetherwind to manage their products and certificates.

The requirement made for the Team Capital by Mr. Todd Gallagher (AetherWind owner) was to reduce the amount of manually job he had before to manage all the documents for his clients. The Web-based Documentation Management would create less work for Mr. Gallagher and allow him to focus on other things within his company. Mr. Gallagher required some crucial functionalities, like; include a login/signup feature, a products page which the user can see the certificates associated to their company and a home page.

Explaining a about the project pages separately, firstly the client can create a login account by defining the USER and PASSWORD. After the client is logged in, they are redirected to the home page that shows an overview of the account which is logged in by showing a chart with the percentages of documents to be “Expired”, “Soon to expire” and “Compliant”. The home page has a separated section names “what’s New”, which shows in text the new documents added, reminders and expiry notice. The page named “Products” is the most important part of the project, because on this page the clients are able to search products and documents, sorting it “Alphabetical”. The client has already the chance to filter the results by choosing some options on the sidebar.

Some backend issues we have come across have been server connectivity, user login, uploading documents, delete documents and defining user-products-documents by using primary and foreign keys.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

There is no doubt that our current crisis with COVID-19 is causing increased strain on local businesses and small businesses as storefronts, restaurants, and more have limited access or are entirely closed to the public. To solve this problem, the POP TiKR “Shop and Tour Local” app is an innovative, tactile, and responsive tool that will allow Canadians to discover, tour, and shop within their local neighbourhoods and right across Canada too.

The Algonquin College’s Data Analytics Research Center team composed of Theo Mirtchev (Managing Director), Adesh Shah (Principal Investigator), Manuel Duong (Mobile Developer), Kiet Vuong (Mobile Developer), managed and developed the POP TikR mobile application (for customers) and collaborated with outside consultants to build merchant portal (for businesses).

For Canadians:
The mobile application helps Canadians discover and explore local POP-UP deals happening in their communities and across Canada. They will be able to view details such as location, directions, hours of operation, and much more. Additionally, the POP TikR application lets you choose between “nearby” and “online” browsing modes. The nearby option shows you spots where you can shop and redeem deals in person. The online option shows you deals from across the country that you can redeem virtually. Customers can filter deals by category for added convenience and share these offers with friends and family using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more. The application is available on Android and iOS platforms.

Technology used:
React Native/Expo
TypeScript
DynamoDB
Amazon Web Services
GraphQL

For Businesses:

The POP TikR merchant portal is an intuitive web application that will help local businesses promote products and services and gain in-store and online sales. The merchant can create their deals online with a unique code that can be retrieved when they shop online or come into your shop when touring your city.

Technology used:
Typescript
Amazon Web Services
DynamoDB
GraphQL
WordPress

POP TikR mobile application will be going on the Android and iOS store on August 15.

We want to thank Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Applied Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship center for their precious support in bringing this project to fruition.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Our team has been assisting EBO – Financial Education Centre, in developing a mobile Android budgeting application. EBO is a mid-sized non-profit organization that provides free financial guidance for individuals and families that face fiscal challenges in their daily lives. Using a pragmatic and compassionate approach, financial advisors at EBO aid their clients in relieving their financial stress. This is accomplished in a multitude of ways, including assisting their clients the opportunity to benefit from Government programs, and providing guidance with respect to managing a budget.
The requested solution by our client, EBO, involves providing a system that will allow EBO clients to track financial items in accordance with their circumstances. This system will be realized for the client by means of a mobile Android application. The idea is to deliver a system that will provide benefit to their clients who, at present, use android devices.
The purpose of this project is to allow EBO clients to track their financial items, and ultimately, share that information with their EBO financial advisor. Currently EBO is using an Excel spreadsheet to enter their client’s information.
In aiding EBO in the development of a mobile application, we will be providing benefit to their clients. EBO clients are often individuals of low income who feel a great deal of stress in coping with their finances. In a micro sense, the creation of our budgeting application aims to relieve some of that stress by provided a less intimidating, and easier way enter and share their financial information.
By making the process of tracking and sharing client financial information simpler, the barrier for clients to engage with EBO financial advisors becomes lower. This in turn, would allow more individuals to benefit from the services provided by EBO. Services which aim to assist struggling individuals to improve their financial wellbeing. The more individuals that seek assistance from EBO, the fewer individuals there will be in society that struggle with their finances. As such, from a macro perspective, this support from our team would play a part in contributing to the betterment of society.
At this juncture, our team has created an Android budgeting application that accomplishes the goals set at the outset of our project. We are thrilled to be able demonstrate our application, via the Re/Action Virtual Showcase, prior to deployment to our client, by the 13th of August 2021. Moving forward, we are excited to get our work in the hands of EBO clients, so they may realize the full benefit of our coordinated efforts with EBO.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Patient and family engagement can improve health outcomes and reduce health costs. From a broad perspective, citizen engagement in health care and research is gaining traction as a compelling mechanism for enhancing quality of care.The shift towards seeing citizens as partners, rather than subjects or patients, is guiding research and clinical care to focus on the aspects that matter most and to which patients and families want to contribute.IC4U is a project collaboration between the Social Innovation Lab at Algonquin College,Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group to support patient and family engagement in Canadian critical care research.The platform will initially be used in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) across Canada.Our approach at improving patient engagement in critical care research is to develop a modern, cloud based web application that is easy to use and has necessary features to harness project collaboration and communication between clinical teams and ICU patients and family members willing to become research partners.IC4U Users will be able to Sign Up and personalize their account by sharing their stories and areas of interest. Once an account is created, users will have access to the IC4U platform, where they can get informed about current research studies or join a research study as a partner. The research team can engage with patients and their families to get input on different aspects of their research study using task features on the platform (e.g. surveys, document review, chat tools).Some example research studies users should expect include: Mobility and physio in the PICUs, Music in the PICU, Biobank Studies etc.In the background, the platform will be using the most modern technologies and infrastructure to ensure scalability. We are achieving this by using React as a front end framework. The platform will be packaged in a Docker container and served to AWS which is arguably the most reliable cloud infrastructure.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Our client is David Summers who works as a labourer for the Tomlinson construction group. This company is based in Nepean who specializes in all sectors:
• Municipal
• Provincial
• Federal
• Residential
• Industrial
• Commercial
• Institutional

The issue that David had was facilitating the transition from paper Safety Data Sheet (SDS) information to electronic SDS information. At the moment, when an incident occurs on a worksite someone needs to go retrieve the SDS information to understand how to approach dealing with the hazardous spill. This is not only time consuming, but inefficient in a scenario when time is of utmost importance.

That is where our workplace safety application comes in. During this prototype phase, we’re connecting the users with an open-source repository of SDS information via the interface of a React-Native application. We’re using Node.js to create the back-end of our application which has connection with the above mentioned open source repository and Google Firebase which handles our user authentication. The goal is to provide a robust and user-friendly experience so that users of all capabilities and circumstances will be able to quickly retrieve the crucial information that they need.

We’ve learned many things from this development process, primarily since our front-end technology, React-Native, and our back-end technology, Node.js, are completely new to us. Tying in Google Firebase and suddenly we’ve covered developing a full stack application from the ground up.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Urban Forest is a local producer of all-natural, handcrafted soap products that are eco-friendly, made without chemicals, preservatives, surfactants, synthetic fragrances, or dyes. This project involved producing two animations for various social media platforms, each with a short 8-second version and a long 18-second version. The videos, explaining the ‘WHY’ and the ‘HOW’ of their natural soap in comparison to commercial chemical soap respectively, aim to draw in a younger target audience.

The ‘WHY’ video focuses on the specific benefits of natural soap, both for yourself and the environment while calling for viewers to review the products they own at home for potentially harmful chemicals commonly found in commercial beauty products. The goal of this video is to get viewers to make the switch from products they are potentially loyal to, and instead of switching to Urban Forest’s chemical-free soap.

The ‘HOW’ video acts more as an instructional video, focusing on questions the client’s found they were commonly asked. One such common question is regarding the usage and benefits of their solid shampoo bars, as many potential customers found themselves solely familiar with the usage of liquid shampoo. The goal of this video is to easily clear up any questions or concerns potential customers may have before making a purchase.

The project was broken down into four main stages: the pre-production phase, where the team produced planning documents such as vision boards, mood boards, personas, concepts, treatments, scripts, shot lists, and storyboards, the production phase, where the team produced and gathered project assets such as graphics, music, fonts, and voiceovers, the post-production phase, where the team produced the animations within Adobe After Effects, and finally, the deployment phase, where the team refined the end products, handing off the deliverables to the client.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Aim for Change is a youth-focused workshop developed for the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) to tackle the growing issue of gun violence around the world. The workshop gives youth who’ve been affected by this issue the opportunity to share their stories.

Funded by the United Nations (UN), Aim for Change was created as part of IANSA’s engagement with the UN “Civil society engagement in support of gender mainstreamed policies, programmes and actions in the fight against small arms trafficking and misuse, in line with the women, peace and security agenda”.

The nine-week project was developed by a multidisciplinary team of four students from the college’s Computer Programming, Graphic Design, Public Relations and Victimology programs. After consulting with IANSA, the team identified their client’s need to develop programming that provides youth in South Africa (who are exposed to gun violence and gangs in their community) a platform for sharing their experience and becoming advocates for change.

After researching themes related to youth and gun violence and interviewing subject matter experts, the team developed the following problem statement: How might after-school programming provide youth a positive platform for not only sharing their experience of living with gun violence but becoming advocates for change?

Aim for Change, is a two-hour after-school workshop that tasks 11-15-year-old students with developing a publication of their own illustrations, short stories, song lyrics and collages. By creating a zine, kids might challenge the problems they see in their communities (i.e. gun violence) and voice their thoughts and feelings in a safe, fun, artistic, creative, and engaging way.

To provide implementation logistics at ground level, the team also connected with Gun Free South Africa (GFSA), one of IANSA’s partners. Working with several of GFSA’s youth workers, the team learned firsthand what it’s like to be a child growing up in a community plagued by daily gun violence and gang activity.

Aim for Change was piloted by GFSA in South Africa in late July. A week later, the team presented project outcomes to the UN, at the Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons – Seventh Biennial Meeting of States.

The long-term plan is for the workshop to expand globally through IANSA’s network of partners. The zines will be distributed in local communities, but IANSA hopes that as the workshop scales around the world, youth from different countries can one day exchange their zines with one another.

In developing Aim for Change, the team learned several lessons. First, collaborative design work can be effectively carried out in an online environment thanks to tools like Miro (a digital whiteboard) and Slack. Taking a co-design approach to the project meant learning to be flexible in responding to the feedback received from the client and partners, and changing direction when necessary. Strong teams know when to work together and when to lean on the strengths of each other. And finally, that open communication is the best way to overcome the challenge of coordinating meetings across two time zones!

To learn more, please visit iansa.org.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Description:
The project’s focus is on remotely operating home appliances and providing security. When the user is away from the system’s location, it can be SMS-based, and it can leverage wireless technology to improve living standards. This method is an excellent solution to the challenges that homeowners confront on a regular basis. Because the system is wireless, it is more flexible and cost-effective. The HACS (Home Equipment Control System) protects against intrusion and automates numerous home appliances with the help of SMS. This system makes use of GSM technology to provide access to the system for security and automated appliance control from anywhere. For SMS transfer from sender to recipient, the home appliance control system (HACS) uses GSM technology. SMS transmission and receiving is utilised for omnipresent appliance access and home breach control. The user can operate household appliances remotely using the appliance control subsystem. This study introduces a low-cost, secure, ubiquitously accessible, auto-configurable, and remotely operated method for home automation.

Components:
1. Arduino UNO
2. LCD (16*2)
3. MAX232
4. Relay
5. Bulbs
6. Energy meter
7. GSM modem
Problem Statement:
The basic working of Single phase induction( Traditional system) type Energy Meter is on two mechanisms:
1. Mechanism of rotation of an aluminum disc which is
made to rotate at a speed proportional to the power.
2. Mechanism of counting and displaying the amount of
energy has been transferred.
Hence, this system has moving characteristics , accuracy
would be less. But the customer of this system would not be able to get real value of their consumption usage.
Biggest disadvantage of this system is Security and
Privacy, this system can be easily theft by consumer, such
as by doing unethical tricks such as by using magnet and
other connection changes user can stop the meter while
also getting energy, user will not be billed for this energy
consumption.
Problem Solution:
This system doesn’t have any moving mechanism, so it
would give accurate reading of energy consumption.
No issue of power thief.
Consumer can easily get awareness about their energy
consumption in real value so they can control their energy
consumption.
Smart Energy meter has User Interface when consumer
can easily check their energy consumption by Mobile /
Computer.
Advantages:
1) Highly sensitive.
2) Taking measures to reduce the electricity bill.
3) Large coverage ON/OFF from any distance.
4) Can handle heavy loads up to 7A.
Application:
1) Home appliance control.
2) Hotel lights / fans control.
3) Shops and showrooms.
4) Industrial applications.
5) Electronic applications for security.
Result:
By this project we can control our home appliances and also we can avoid the unnecessary use of electricity by giving the response to arduino.

Contact the Team

Gallery