valiantone
commented
5 months ago Ok, so the scope of this project may be too large to achieve in 10 weeks, let's make a first start towards a MVP that should be usable and solve the core need, this would require:
UX
The task would be straight-forward to implement however the app seems to be for expert users in a specific domain. Can you guarantee the UX techies access to test users (3-5 users) who would be willing to test and give feedback? This is mandatory for the UX process.
WD
Also a straight-forward task, once you lockdown a few features for development the FE and BE techies can divide the required tasks between themselves. Maybe already take some time to think of features that would be required (eg search over graph database, dashboard view, history view, photo upload etc) for the app. Final decisions may differ, but it's good to list some prospective ideas to start.
Please also remember only a webapp would be within the scope of project phase, native application development has not bee covered in our curriculum.
DS/DL
Please differentiate between tasks that would be performed by DL techies (building image classification to detect and identify window elements) vs DS techies (auto-suggestion and completion for analytical and ml-based inference of parameters in templates). Here again, final features are subject to change but would be good to have a clear initial proposal on this from project requestor.
Simply, respond to the comments @Jannik0s and we can close this conversation and move your project to Accepted so you are all clear for team formation and project phase! 🚀
Jannik0s
martajasinska
mahanfa
Mananosrati
What's the problem you are trying to solve?
Baukreisel is an interdisciplinary collective and non profit working towards enabling reuse in the construction industry at scale. Material category after material category we are developing rationalized reuse processes for cataloging/recording, extracting, transporting, refurbishing and reinserting building material and elements.Due to their high carbon impact and the potential to be reused at scale our current research projects are focused on concrete primary structures and windows elements. The research initiative is called reuse.matters.In the reuse process the recording and surveying of the elements is a very time consuming and tedious task.The current methods (Excel or Airtable) do not offer any level of automation and require you to manually input information for similar elements again and again. Besides that, the databases cannot store the different sub elements, that e.g. a window consists of, in a machine readable and understandable way.This knowledge about the interconnection of elements and subelements is especially important when refurbishing or transforming. For example when dealing with windows the glass and the frame might be reused separately and in a different way. Thus information about the subelement is important and should be derived as implicit knowledge.In short the project should solve 3 problems:-
What's your idea for a solution to the given "problem"?
A mobile app to record and survey building elements on site and a graph database to store the information so that later on explicit and implicit knowledge can be retrieved.In order to being a feasible project, that can be developed in the scope and duration of the project phase the app shall be focus on the surveying of window elements.To speed up the recording process there are three key elements:- An easy to use interface that quickly guides you through the recording process- Smart autofills and suggestions that reduce the need to input the same information several times. An example could be that the building location and the current storey you are in is prefilled with information from the last entry. Similarly element types/categories could be suggested while typing etc.- A catalogue of possible shapes and window configurations (amount of windows sashes, fanlight, door etc.) and object recognition that suggest, based upon the catalogue, the type of configuration to the user after taking a photo. Retrieving information about the frame colour or material would be great but maybe more difficult to retrieve.(- A way to quickly get rough measurements using the phones camera and AR features would be great but very likely beyond the scope of the project phase so just as a note)Regarding storing the data, the building industry has developed several semantic ontologies to structure the data that could be used as the foundation for the layout of the graph database. In contrast to relational databases, graph databases allow you to very easily store relationships (I know, somewhat unintuitive). This is espacially important when working with buildings and materials. There are geometrical relationships (room is part of a storey is part of a building) and type relationships (oak is a type of hardwood is a type of wood) and subelement relationships (glass and frame are a subelement of a casement is a sub element of a window is a sub element of the facade).This can be modeled in a graph like neo4j and not only explicit but also implicit knowledge can be retrieved (amount of glass elements inside a storey) (all wooden window frames in a building etc.).Even though graph databases offer a lot of advantages in this scenario their implementation might be beyond the scope of the project phase and as an MVP the app could also work with a relational database.
Which tracks do you think could be involved?
DL/DS WD UX
How do you imagine Deep Learning and/or Data Science could contribute to this project?
Through setting up and training a neural network that allows the app to recognize the shape and configuration of the photographed windows elements.
How do you imagine User Experience Design could contribute to this project?
Though setting up an easy to use interface that lets the user quickly cycle through the recording steps.
How do you imagine Web Development could contribute to this project?
Through setting up a front end that autofills and suggests inputs to make the recording and surveying process faster.Through setting up a backend that allows the information and relationships to be stored in a graph database.
What are the most important challenges & bottlenecks of your project?
What are the most important success factors of your project?
Teamwork:Only if different people from the different tracks work well together the project can realize its full potentialPractical insight:Baukreisel is going to supply us as good as possible with all the real world information about the recording process.
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