Project proposal

[UNLV-ShaneD]

Submit a project proposal. As a reminder, we need to include a few key points:

Project Overview What problem does this project address? What is the goal of this project? What is the scope of this project?

As another reminder, you should send your individual proposal to Mr. Sowders by tonight (Feb 22).

Please respond with a copy, here, along with discussion.

[UNLV-ShaneD]

Budgeting web application

What problem does this project address? When making a large purchase or budget-related decision, people need to know what their budget will be for the next year, two years, or ten years may be. It is very easy for someone to come up with a rough estimate of income and expenditures with the use of a simple arithmetic calculator, but this may leave many hidden expenditures out of the picture. Furthermore, when considering many smaller recurring budget items of different frequencies, much finer precision is needed than just a rough estimate.

What is the goal of this project? This project aims to aid budget-related decision-making by informing. The user will be able to use the product to project their income forward by several years, accounting for recurring expenditures, one-off transactions, and expected income changes. When data scraping is used and the user accurately predicts future budget-changing items, product should be able to project balances more accurately than off-hand estimates (subjective) (scraping reveals what may be not-so-obvious recurring expenditures).

What is the scope of this project? Historic income and expenditure data will be processed by the project for forecasting - this data may be scraped from a fixed set of formats of sources (for simplicity). (Use of heuristics to determine data formats is not part of scope.) Project will be deployed to a central server as a web application and may be viewed from a consumer computer. Automatically scraping data is out of scope (for security/ethics concerns - a few weeks may not be sufficient to assure security). Project is aimed at individual users, particularly young adults. Adjusting projections to inflation is part of scope as it significantly affects budgeting amounts.

[dabinett]

My idea got shot down so I won't bother posting it here.

[strongd]

Well my idea also got shot down lol. I'll post it here anyway, see if maybe it could be changed, but Matt said that there would be too many security & integration risks.

Project: Electronic Voting/Reporting System

What problem does this project address? This project addresses the problem of low voter turnout. Voter turnout has a lot of room to be much higher. If people can do it securely at home through an electronic voting system on the web, then it may increase voter accessibility.

What is the goal of this project? The goal of the project is to develop an electronic voting/reporting system to be used as a web application. This system would allow registered voters to login and vote for candidates or propositions (or whatever is up for voting at the time) from their home computer.

What is the scope of this project? The scope is providing the services required by this voting system. There would have to be a database on the backend to keep track of votes, provide login for registered voters, some way to count/report/print the votes, and possible other features that are relevant. The interface would have to be simple and easy to use for a someone voting from home.

[solisa7]

My idea is a sort of budget-management tool with a social aspect as a motivator. Sowders said it was interesting, if that's worth anything.

What problem does this project address? This project allows people to keep better track of household (and business?) budgets. It is intended to help reduce the number of people in debt by providing a tool to more closely manage and scrutinize budgets.

What is the goal of this project? The goal of this project is to create an environment that gives the flexibility to create and actively manage and change a household budget. Through its interactivity, a user can dynamically change the budget. The user can also browse other (anonymous) active budgets and gauge success levels through arbitrary indicators.

What is the scope of this project? Tentatively, the scope of this project encompasses a user with some sort of web access and Java installation that wishes to spend some time inputting and analyzing his/her line items.

[solisa7]

What problem does this project address? This project allows people to keep better track of household (and business?) budgets. It is intended to help reduce the number of people in debt by providing a tool to more closely manage and scrutinize budgets.

What is the goal of this project? The goal of this project is to create an environment that gives the flexibility to create and actively manage and change a household budget. Through its interactivity, a user can dynamically change the budget. The user can also browse other (anonymous) active budgets and gauge success levels through arbitrary indicators.

What is the scope of this project? Tentatively, the scope of this project encompasses a user with some sort of web access and Java installation that wishes to spend some time inputting and analyzing his/her line items.

@UNLV-ShaneD Lol, looks like we were thinking on the same track. Maybe merge our ideas?

@dabinett What was your idea again? I forgot.

[UNLV-ShaneD]

@strongd Yeah...install a keylogger/trojan or other malicious software on a voting computer and you can usurp the user's vote. If only everyone could live in society where no one would be corrupt enough to do something like that...then we wouldn't need governments :) Feel free to come up with second ideas - we are going to have to work on this for three weeks.

@solisa7 It seems the problems we are addressing overlap, but we are coming at it from separate angles. I'm looking at a solution as more of an analytical-aid; where people already have the willingness to budget, but just not the time to sort through all the information. You're looking at it as more of a motivational tool, where people need a boost to get them to think about budgets. Merging these two problems may make a behemoth of a project. On that note: I've already sketched a division of labor document. If we compare such documents for these ideas, I'd estimate that we'd find the two ideas to be very different.

Here is said document: http://eagle.undo.it:8083/private/cs473/2012_02_22_projectproposal_division.txt

[dabinett]

My idea was an e-mail client. It was deemed "BORING!!!" and unsuccessful since I didn't mention spam filtering in my scope.

[benallyc]

My idea involves implementing a Java web application for the Disability Resource Center. I was thinking, since there are usually announcements for students who are interested in taking notes for a particular class. We could develop sort of a WebCampus structure. Where disability resource center students would have an account with our system, and download notes from the students who are getting paid to take notes for the specified class. The students who are getting paid for those notes will never have to visit the disability resource center, because our system would have options to upload files such as: WORD documents, PDFs, and even students who recording their lectures via a voice recording device would be able to upload those onto the system. In theory, the students and DRC faculty members would also have accounts which will enable them privileges to upload such files onto the web application. I'm not entirely sure about how the DRC works, but this is one of the ideas I was considering.

Matt's response to the idea is as follows, "If you did this project, how would you split the work between 4-5 people. There does not seem like there is enough work for 3 weeks."

So, somewhat shotdown?

[dabinett]

Umm, have we settled on an idea? We do need to turn in an overview, proposal and project plan (per Readyset Tigris templates) by Monday night.

[UNLV-ShaneD]

I went ahead and did the documents for my idea since no one else was confident enough to post how they would break down the work. Feel free to change them up; they're on Google documents.

[UNLV-ShaneD]

The "Budgeting web application" is now the agreed-upon group project.