Week 1

For the very first week of Full-Stack Development (FSD) and Portfolio 2 (P2), we had to choose a sub theme and after our scope is confirmed, we had to form our groups. During this period of time, we were brainstorming for an unique and innovative idea that had not been implemented within Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Campus yet.

We started off with a directory for NP, stationed in hot spots all around the campus for those in NP who needs help with navigation. We researched and found out that NP actually already has a navigation website, you can take a look at it: https://np.conveno.com/npmap/web/app/#/app/home. The functions are good and it would be ridiculous to redo the entire navigation system to add new features because I personally felt that it was redundant. Originally, we had planned to scrap the directory idea and move on to find others. We had tried to think of many other ideas, like video analytics to be implemented in canteens/hot-spots to allow users from any where else know whether a location is crowded or not, before they start walking towards their destination. However, we had also realized that the problem has been thought of and there is already a similar idea that NP has initiated, which is to access the cloud database and count the number of NP WiFi users at that specific canteen. Here's the link: https://www1.np.edu.sg/npnet/wifiatcanteen/Dashboard.aspx. Basically, it's the same concept as ours but they have an advantage over us because they have an access to such sensitive information while we do not.

We were stuck for a few days, not being able to come up with anything other than those mentioned above because almost all of the obvious problems in NP already has at least 1 solution. Until, our lecturer had guided us to go in the direction of thinking of the 5W1H, allowing us to think it through and believe in what we want to solve. Even with coming up with the problem statement: "To help navigate those in NP and require directions.", we had to think of another step further, why do we actually want to solve this problem? Then there was an eureka moment where we realised it was because the directions provided by the NP Map was not clear, it guides you to the block but not the lobby nor classrooms. The next question would be, how are we able to make it clearer then?

Then the idea of using Augmented Reality (AR) came up to us, using AR to guide the users who need directions. The project idea sounds feasible and at the same time interesting, all of us were motivated to research on the topic and are determined to make the main feature a wow factor to impress our judges during Hackathon on week 5.