Group Brainstorm-Group:Group 3
From Cs160-sp08
Contents |
Group Members
Brainstorming
List of Ideas
- 1. Picture-taking translator thing
- 2. The Reminder Reminder
- 2b. Automatic Event addition (pulls from internet)
- 3. Attraction Seeker
- 4. Fast food nutrition calculator
- 4b. Similar to 4, but keeps track of nutrition and caloric intake/output all day. Also, planner, GPS tracker for tracking calories burned by walking
- 5. Online radio tuner
- 6. Object tracker (pets) w/ GPS
- 7. Consensual stalking like buddy list (GPS tracking) + Google Maps/Directions, works w/ social networks
- 8. Console emulation w/ GPS to tell you're near a store
- 9. SSH
- 10. Use multiple devices at once (use ball bounce w/ GPS)
- 11. Self esteem killer
- 11b. 11, but tie caller ID w/ social network
- 12. Personalized weather report (nagging and recommendations)
- 13. Educational programs (possibly w/ voice?)
- 14. Mood tracker/blogger thing (warns friends if you're mad)
- 15. Remote control/gamepad/mouse/etc.
- 16. WebMD mobile
- 17. Matlab on the go
- 17b. Graphing calculator simulator
- 18. Using GPS for gaming/entertainment
- 19. Waking up sleepy drivers w/ annoying beeps
- 20. Crash prevention w/ GPS between 2 cars w/ mobile phones
- 21. Cooking helper, tracks if you need ingredients, GPS tracker helps find a store
- 22. Electronic fashion analyzer (by taking picture of someone)
- 23. Danger tracker (find safe route home at night), and ask for help; tracks natural disasters too
- 24. Shopping- take picture, tell if good price, and if it's good product
- 25. Map creator (draw an intersection, map pops out)
- 26. Driving evaluator (give evaluation after or possibly on the go)
- 27. Quake/Doom
- 28. Complaint acceptor
- 29. Compute total talk time to a contact list buddy
- 30. People finder (find people w/ similar hobbies)
Thought Process (elimination of ideas)
Ideas that are plausible (feasible to make, and are somewhat unique):
- Camera translator- user takes picture of words, which will get translated into another given language.
- People finder- Use Facebook widget or some other social networking thing to help find people with the same interests
- Danger tracker: pull data online to find relatively safer areas (or paths) to aid in walking home in the dark; can also pull data from websites to notify if a natural disaster is occurring, and how to find shelter, help, etc.
- Online radio tuner (mobile Winamp-type thing)- we haven't seen this done before
- Consensual stalking- when you want to meet up with someone, send a request to him/her, and if approved, it will give you the directions to his/her current location, with a map, using GPS.
- Automatic event reminder, pulling data from online sources to alert you of a new show, or when the new Buffy comic comes out, etc.
- Personal weather report (nagging you to bring an umbrella if it knows that it's going to rain later today; especially for those people who don't check weather explicitly when they go out; can be set to alarm at a certain time, etc)
Elimination Round 2 (What we crossed out, based on plausibility)
- People finder- will have to learn Facebook
- Danger tracker- too much data that we might not have access to (how to convert a PDF w/ lots of colors to something that's machine-readable?)
- Online radio tuner- Winamp is not open-source, as far as we know
- Automatic event reminder- too much data that we may not have access to
Elimination Round 3
- We eliminated the Consensual Stalking, because we looked on the wiki, and there was a very similar idea that someone else already proposed
Final Decision
- We picked the camera translation idea because it seemed more original than the weather reminder.
Description
Target Users
One target group is foreigners without a clear grasp of the English language. Their main problem is going to be not understanding the English alphabet, so traditional devices (type in word, then translate) won't work well. These foreigners could include tourists, family visitors, and people in general without a firm grasp of the English language. This is also for people who don't want the hassle that traditional translation devices/techniques (such as human translators and books) require.
Problem Description
Our target group won't be familiar with the language, and at worst, won't be familiar with the English alphabet at all. Therefore, this will definitely help them translate public signs, menus, etc. This will allow them to walk around town unattended without as much difficulty. This will definitely help tourists who often need translation aids like this in the first place.
Context
The spirit of this application is one as a translation tool and there are plenty of translation tools out there. However, none of them address our concerns and they also tend to be more of a hassle. First of all, it has to be mobile for it to be useful, so computers are out. Second, for personal translators/family members/etc, the person might want to go on their own. If it's a family member or friend, it might be a burden to constantly babysit. Also, this can be expensive, both time and money wise. Dictionaries are a problem because lookup can be slow because of unfamiliarity with the language and lookup time. Also, many signs are also more graphically based and may be difficult to look up. We also have pocket translators. However, this is also a problem with more graphically based signs. Also, typing speed is an issue especially for people unfamiliar with the language.
Why Android/Mobile
Why mobile? If you're walking around, it HAS to be mobile. This is especially true for tourists and people who need or want to go around town alone. We also need a camera which all phones come with standard and anything that uses Android is going to have a good camera. Plus, we need the processing power and storage capabilities of these new fangled smart phones. Why Android? The Linux kernel will make it easier to use some existing software. We know back in '97, there were windows programs that allowed the use of converting pictures with text to just text. We can use WINE to use these programs or even Linux made open source free programs to help with picture to text conversion. Also, Android will help with converting English text to other languages and Android has or will have multi-language support so we don't have to program our own foreign language support.
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