See the latest innovations coming out of AC this Friday!

Posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2021

The Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Virtual RE/ACTION Showcase is coming up THIS Friday, August 13, 2021, from 11 am to 12:15 pm. Join Algonquin College students exhibit forward-looking research and technology projects produced in collaboration with industry, institutional and community partners to offer innovative solutions to everyday problems. You can register for the day’s events here.

Here are a couple of projects you can expect to see at the showcase:

App Developed in Collaboration with AC Students Promises to Boost Local Economy

A mobile app developed by Algonquin Students in collaboration with an Ottawa entrepreneur could provide a significant boost to the local economy when it launches this month.

The app, named POP TikR, which will be featured in an online catalogue at Friday’s Virtual RE/ACTION Showcase, connects users with local businesses by alerting them to deals and promotions at nearby restaurants or shops. Imagine you’re two blocks away from a restaurant with a two-for-one deal on margaritas. The app would send you an alert, and you could either save the deal to your wallet for later or take advantage of it right away. Half a block away from a nail salon offering reduced rates on pedicures? POP TikR will let you know.

The idea is to promote local businesses to users and save the customer money.

Kiet Tuan Vuong and Nhatthanh (Manuel) Duong, two recent Algonquin students, worked on the app as part of their studies in the Mobile Application Design and Development Program. The app was brought to them by Senior Research Associate and Professor Adesh Shah, who supervised their work alongside Theodore Mirtchev, Managing Director of the Data Analytics Centre at the Office of Applied Research, Innovation and Technology.

The founder of POP TikR, Kamal Dhanoa, had been collaborating with Algonquin on this project for years, mainly for branding and marketing. But after experiencing difficulties with the team she had working on its software, she asked if Algonquin could help solidify the app’s code base.

Shah and Mirtchev agreed to dedicate students to help develop the app. Shah has since managed multiple groups of students working on Pop TikR’s development, and Vuong and Duong are the team that brought the project to completion.

“When we initially got this project, the code base had lots of errors, but Kiet and Manuel did an amazing job making sure that it is up to snuff,” says Shah, who adds the team has just finished the testing phase and is now doing the final ‘hardcore’ testing.
Dhanoa is similarly enthusiastic about the duo’s work, saying both developers were “fantastic” and that she hopes to hire them in the future. She adds she is grateful for all the help she has gotten from Algonquin over the years.

Vuong and Dong say developing the app taught them a lot, not only about testing phases — where all the bugs in an app are worked out, one of the most challenging aspects of the work — but also about working on a real-world project for a real client.
“We learned a lot of things doing the project, like working together in an agile environment,” says Vuong, “as well as the more important part for the new guys like us — which is when to say yes and when to say no to clients, and what to do when something does not go right.”

Both clearly believe in the idea driving the app, saying it is unique in the way it helps local businesses.

Users of POP TikR can not only save deals for themselves, but also share them with friends and family. They can favourite or follow certain stores or businesses and deals from those places will pop up again no matter where they are. The app will know where users are automatically — even follow them to other cities — or they can enter their location manually if they are uncomfortable with location tracking.

Users can even search specific locations throughout Canada for deals.

Shah says the team has worked hard to make the app as user-friendly as possible, and says everything users do, from checking out a deal to searching a new business, happens inside the application.

Both Shah and Mirtchev believe POP TikR has the potential to be a big success.

“This is a movement,” says Mirtchev. “I like the idea very much. Who would say no to supporting local businesses?”

Victimology Research Suggests Media Needs Better Training to Deal with Victims

While conducting a study on resilience in victims of violent crime, researchers at Algonquin’s Victimology Centre discovered victims and survivors had a lot to say about their interactions with the media after the crime.

At the end of the resilience study, explains Algonquin Victimology student Amy Boileau, they did qualitative interviews and provided a survey to study participants. Fifty-one respondents brought up their experiences with the media without prompting.
“Unfortunately, a lot of it was negative,” says Boileau, “so it needed to be addressed.” Boileau and Katherine Thompson, the other Algonquin student conducting research in the study, analyzed the responses of all the participants who discussed interactions with media, and followed up with 37 of them. The pair are working under the supervision of Victimology Research Chair Benjamin Roebuck and Professor Steve Sullivan.

Boileau and Thompson, who will present the findings from their research Friday during the Office of Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Virtual RE/ACTION Showcase, said they split responses into two categories: those that said media interactions were helpful, and those that felt they were harmful — a more common sentiment.

On the positive side, respondents discussed how they were grateful for the attention the media could bring to a case that might have been under the radar for years, and how talking to the media gave them a chance to talk about their loved ones. On the negative side, victims said they felt the media revictimized them by bringing up details of the crime repeatedly, invaded their privacy and violated their sense of control, and often reported inaccurate information. Respondents felt they had no good avenue to amend reporting errors, or no idea how to do so.

“A lot of it goes back to control,” says Boileau, “so, not being able to control how the media reports on it, not being able to control when the media approaches them, or how their interactions actually go with the media.”

“So that led us to the need for more education for reporters and journalists who need to have trauma-informed training or victim-oriented training to be able to better approach victims and survivors. But also, the victims and survivors need education, they need to know how the media operates, because they’re in distress and they don’t know where to look for resources and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of resources out there for them.”

Thompson and Boileau identified that a lot of victims don’t know their rights when it comes to the media. Some don’t know they can refuse to talk to a reporter.

Both see education as the important end-result of their research, hoping it may lead to training initiatives for victims through victim services and the police, and training for the media through various organizations focused on victims’ rights. They would also like to see extensive victims-rights and trauma-informed training become mandatory in any education curriculum for journalists.
“One of our main points is not to criticize the media entirely or not come across as saying that the media is all bad or all negative when it comes to interacting with survivors,” says Thompson. “But for the well-being of both the media and survivors, it’s important to have further education and resources on that issue, and the media can be a very useful platform for survivors to get their story out and reclaim their narrative and reclaim their story.”


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