Software Engineering Showcase: Whakaaturanga Hanga Pūmanawa

About the Software Engineering Showcase
Students in SENG302 are involved in a year-long software engineering project. SENG302 is done in teams. All teams in SENG302 follow a similar backlog (i.e. the overall project is the same with a few differences between teams).

At the end of the year, each group gets a chance to present to the whole department. SENG302 students do technical presentations and demos at their reviews every sprint, so the Software Engineering Showcase is more of a celebration of their year and what they have learnt. These presentations form part of the SENG302 course requirements.

The Software Engineering Showcase is open to everyone including parents, friends, industry representatives, and the wider community. Everyone is invited to join us as we showcase the fruits of the hard work and effort that goes into each one of these projects

Product: A Travel Application Assistant
The SENG302 project for 2019 explored the creation of an application to help travellers with various aspects of their travel.

Travel is increasing worldwide with more people than ever engaging in some form of international and/or domestic travel. According to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in 2018 alone, worldwide international tourist arrivals totalled 1.4 billion, two years ahead of forecasts. The highest growth was in the Middle East (10%) and Africa (7%), with Asia, Pacific, and Europe increasing at 6%. As an interesting note, the number of international travellers has increased substantially 1950 (25 million), 1970 (166 million), 1990 (435 million).

In New Zealand, according to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, international tourism reached a record high of nearly 3.9 million visitors in 2018 and is forecast to reach 5.1 million in 2025. Auckland Airport alone had 21.1 million passengers during the year.

However, organising travel is difficult. There are different types of travellers who have different needs. For example, a corporate traveller would have very different needs to a backpacker. There are a few apps that help with parts of the travel process. For example, booking flights or accommodation, blogging, photo/video uploads, and social media to keep friends/family up-to-date on things that happened en route.

However, it would be good to have an application that combines some or all of these aspects to provide a useful travel experience.

In this project, teams had to create a travel application, where individual travellers could log in, create a profile, and organise various types of travel. This included the ability to then upload media during the trip.

Working in a team to develop a piece of working, usable, and useful software is difficult. Doing this with a set of changing requirements, even though realistic, makes it even more challenging.

From a common basis with a restrictive set of user requirements, the eight teams delivered very different and interesting pieces of software. Students learnt how to develop a professional product and add their own touch by proposing user stories depending on potential specific audience requirements.