Smart Tenant wins first place at RE/ACTION Showcase
Posted on Friday, August 12th, 2022
Smart Tenant earned first place at Friday’s RE/ACTION: Applied Research Showcase. The mobile app provides a platform for tenants to connect with the local community, buy and sell good in an online marketplace and correspond with their shared property management company.
The members of the student team that designed the app — including leader Kiet Vuong, mobile app developer Evan Liko, web developer Son Tran and UI/UX designer Kseniia Chornokondratenko — each brought their own expertise to achieve the client’s vision. Features of the app include private messaging between tenants, landlord/tenant correspondence through cloud functions, as well as moderation of not safe for work content on the newsfeed and marketplace screens through the use of AI.
Hosted by the Office of Applied Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship (ARIE), the goal of RE/ACTION is to create a platform for students to showcase their hard work to an audience of their peers, faculty and community partners. Five project finalists were chosen out of nearly 30 submissions to present to a panel of industry professionals during the live Zoom event.
Kristine Dawson, Associate Vice President, Experiential Learning & Innovation, opened the showcase and announced the five finalist teams.
“I can proudly say that in every showcase, our students continue to raise the bar. When I see such diverse and impactful project outcomes, I am reminded of just how powerful experiential learning through applied research can be,” said Dawson.
Each team was allotted four minutes to present an overview of their project, followed by a Q&A section with the panel of judges. Questions focused on project challenges, as well as considerations when working with the diverse needs of clients.
Moderated by Stephen Gagné, Professor, Business Management and Entrepreneurship at Algonquin College, the judges panel consisted of Ashoka Patel, Kim Perry, Michael Wood, Sylvain Gagné and Thandiwe Ncube.
While the judges were deliberating, keynote speaker Carl Byers, Chief Strategy Officer at contextere, and Matthew Jerabek, ARIE Associate Manager, discussed the value of applied research for recent graduates in the modern workplace.
Before announcing the winners, Algonquin College President and CEO Claude Brulé acknowledged the students’ hard work and thanked partners for their support.
“Whether a finalist or not, everyone who participated in a project rose to the occasion by solving problems, innovating and pursuing ideas with the kinds of courage and conviction that employers are looking for in today’s workplace, and the talented skilled workforce of the future,” he said. “In any project or endeavour, working together benefits all of us, from large enterprises to small businesses and local communities, and we are thankful to our partners for the real-world learning opportunities they bring to our college and our learners.”
Second place went to In Sight – A Call for Transparency, a solution to help increase the client satisfaction rate at the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada call centres.
Third place went to Digital Signage Management System, a platform and device agnostic app providing users the ability to manage and monitor thousands of endpoints in real-time on-the-go from a single hub.
Other finalists included Reassurance for IRCC Clients, a webform tracking system providing reassurance to clients and decreasing the number of calls to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and Aegis Safety Application, a safety mobile app providing location tracking and a smart SOS signal to trusted contacts, with time and distance estimations.
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