Computer Science

Apps for Good

Overview

Our Apps for Good project was also a crossover with our STEM Assistive Technology project. I worked with Arnav, Shreya, and Peter. In addition to creating an app for tracking medication schedules, we created a pillbox that is connected to our app that is able to sense whether the user has or has not taken their medications. You can click here to see the engineering part of our project.

Problem & Audience

As people get older, they tend to take more medications, and can become more forgetful about when they need to take their medications. My group did research on a phenomenon known as ADEs, or Adverse Drug Events. ADEs occur when a medication is taken incorrectly, whether that includes being taken at the wrong time, in the wrong dosage, or taking the wrong medication completely. Our project is targeted towards those who take a lot of medications as well as those who are sometimes forgetful when it comes to taking their medications.

Goal

The goal of our project is to decrease the occurrence of ADEs, ensure the user is taking their medications correctly, and give caretaker’s of the users peace of mind that the user is taking all of their medications correctly. Below is the minimum viable product of our project (MVP) and the most important features we wanted to implement into our app.

Alert users when to take their medications.
Informs the user of which medication(s) to take and which compartment of the pillbox they are located in.
Connect to caregivers or emergency contacts to inform them of whether or not the user has taken their medications.

Design & Implementation

First, we designed our app using figma in order to decide what colors we wanted to use, and what we wanted our app to look like. Next, we used flutter with dart in order to create the user interface of our app. We used Firebase Firestore to store all users’ information. Additionally, we used asynchronous cloud functions in order to send text messages to both users and caretakers with reminders to take medications and an update on whether the medications were taken or not.

Testing

A significant part of our testing occurred during our implementation process as we continued to add features to our app. One major thing we did to test our app was create multiple different users with different roles (caretaker or client) in order to see if all features worked correctly and were being stored in Firestore correctly.

Poster

Line Art

One of my favorite labs we have done this year is the line art lab. One of the topics we learned about in class is iteration using “for” loops. In this case, “for” loops were used in order to create the lines for each corner of the drawing. Then, the same thing was repeated within a smaller section of the image so that the pattern was repeated inside of itself. This lab was definitely challenging, but I think it is so cool to see how many different kinds of patterns can be created with the concept of iteration and the use of “for” loops.

HiLo Guess My Number

This program was a challenge we completed earlier in the year when we were first introduced to loops and if statements. Using both loops and if statements as well as user input and a random number generator, the game was made. The way it works is the computer first picks a random number. Then, the user is asked to guess a number and see if it matches the computer’s number. If the guess is incorrect, the computer will tell the player whether the guess is too low or too high. Then, the user is asked to guess again. This process repeats until the user guesses the correct number. Additionally, the user can stop playing the game whenever they would like and are asked if they would like to play again once they have guessed the correct number.

Nicole Plotnik