• EPFL
• Software Development Project
• Pocket Campus Demo Event

• français
• English

Software Development Project 

Pocket Campus: Demo Event

On Monday December 20, there was a demo event marking the release of Pocket Campus 1.0 at EPFL. Pocket Campus is a project involving the development of a smartphone application built by undergraduate students taking the Software Development Project course (http://sweng.epfl.ch/). The goal of the app is to help students, faculty, alumni, and visitors get around the EPFL campus. Features include:

• Show what meals are available at the on-campus cafeterias, along with real-time ratings, pictures of the meals, information on the queue length, etc.
• Find shortest route between your current position and various EPFL points of interests, get directions to the nearest printer/bathroom/etc.
• Compute your course schedule based on topic preferences, time constraints, etc.
• Real-time travel planning for going on/off campus, traveling around Switzerland, or anywhere across Europe
• Use WiFi triangulation to get your accurate position when indoors (and no GPS signal)
• Share your position with friends, find them on campus, etc.
• Get meal suggestions based on your likes and dislikes

The project started out with a market study, in which the students surveyed almost 200 on-campus people to determine the features they desire. After one semester of hard work, the students are now ready to demo and release the application; after the demo, there will be an opportunity to discuss in more detail and network around snacks and drinks. The project's website is at http://pocketcampus.org/. Monday's event was open to all members of I&C. We had a panel of invited guests to offer feedback to the students and course staff on the application, as well as on the course:

• Manuel Acevedo (CEO of MadeInLocal, VP of EPFL A3 Alumni Association)
• Mehdi Aminian (CEO of Jilion, Licensing Officer @ EPFL)
• Alexandre Bisenz (Head of communication @ EPFL A3 Alumni Association)
• Kevin Blackman (Co-Founder of DealOnTheWay)
• Didier Bonvin (Editor @ EPFL MediaCom)
• Dr. Richard Ekwall (Software engineer @ Google)
• Claude Florin (President of A3 Angels Club)
• Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux (Director of LCA1)
• David Lazar (Software engineer @ Google)
• Dr. Ingrid Le Duc (Scientist @ Center for Pedagogical Research and Support)
• Dr. Maxime Monod (Software Architect @ Klewel)
• Prof. Bernard Moret (Chef de section Computer Science, Director of LCBB)
• Prof. Emre Telatar (Chef de section Communication Science, Director of LTHI)

Project and course background

Planning a feature, estimating total cost, packaging it up for distribution and maintenance is something that inexperienced developers never get right, but is often vital for the success of a software project. Mediating between the needs of customers and the turn-coffee-into-code hacker attitude requires understanding both sides of the equation. In this course, we pretend we are a start-up and will develop the Campus Buddy, a mobile phone application to help EPFL members locate their friends on campus, spot the best lunch menus, get up-to-date information on campus events, find a lecture hall on the map, etc. Students are encouraged to take the Software Development Project concurrently with Software Engineering, because the two courses complement each other. This course provides a taste of developing software in the real world, working in teams larger than 2-3 people, working with code bases that cannot be comprehended in their entirety, and interacting with real customers.