Welcome to the New Media Institute’s Fall 2015 SLAM—it’s going to be an amazing evening. Here’s what we’ll be up to:
5:30P — Meet and Greet
6:00P — Welcome & Dinner
6:30P — Stand-up Presentations
7:30P — Booth Presentations
8:30P — Mock Interviews
9:15P — Certificates & Networking Reception
10:00P — Adios until next time!

We’re thrilled to be hosting SLAM at Atlanta Tech Village (3423 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30305). It’s an amazing space, and we’re proud to have alums working at several companies in the building.

The posts in this publication are written by each of the capstone teams to tell you more about their amazing projects. We hope you’ll take the time to look through them and learn more about the experiences these teams had creating the work you’ll be seeing tonight.

We like to keep things brief at the NMI, so that’s it for now—thanks for reading!

NMI SLAM Fall 2015 was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Don’t you wish you could know all of your pets wants and needs? Dog House uses a home hub to gather data that gives you insight to better understand your canine pal. It’s like Home Kit for your pet. Convenient to use through your Apple Watch and iPhone and a great way to communicate with your pup.

You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tech

Calendar

An event manager at your fingertips, for every day, such as walks around the neighborhood, daily medications, and play dates with Spot. As well as your not so every day, such as trips to the vet and appointments with your groomer to keep Rocky looking sharp.

Create new appointments and push notifications that come right to your Apple Watch. Sync your dog’s calendar to your personal calendar. Organize your dog’s medical appointments, play dates and more in one location. DogHouse sends notifications to your Apple Watch and iPhone to remind you of important upcoming tasks to get done.

Medical History

Organizes and stores all of your crucial veterinarian information such as your vet’s address, contact information, and hours of operation, in one convenient place. Provides fast access in the event of a canine emergency or simplicity and ease when scheduling vet appointments.

A subsection under Medical History offers owners a list of vaccinations and appointment dates in chronological order to make sure you never miss an appointment and that Rocky stays healthy.

Dates and descriptions of surgeries can be easily found as part of the Medical History feature as well, to give you a precise timeframe so you can prepare your pup for his upcoming treatment.

Nutrition

Monitor your dog’s food and water intake wherever and whenever you want. Stay up to date on the status of your pet’s food bowls by visual trackers sent to your iPhone or Apple Watch. Getting low? Simply press a button to refill the bowls with simplicity and ease. DogHouse also provides insight into the health of your animals by storing when and how much your dog eats. Easily forward this info to your veterinarian through the app to provide them with a more complex dietary history. Set up alerts to remind you to buy more of your dog’s favorite food or treats when they get low.

Activity

Track your dog’s fitness over time, set goals, and send reminders to motivate you and your pet to stay active. Find trails, dog parks, and other pet-friendly environments using location services. This feature consolidates your activity data and encourages you to keep up the progress!

Share your pet’s photos and daily activity with your circle on social media. Available to upload via twitter, facebook, and instagram through the app. Feel free to post a snap of your trail route to showcase your triumphs from the day or a collage of pictures from your day’s hike.

All posts incorporate the hashtag #DogHouse so you can find fellow owners and their hairy companions when you search the hashtag. A community of tech-savvy dog lovers right in the palm of your hand (or on your wrist).

In addition, this feature monitors the use of interactive pet toys that keep track of how much your pet is playing with you or solo while you are away.

Why Dog House?

Our innovation stems from our realization that technology is constantly working to improve and better our lives in every way. So why wouldn’t that extend to our pets? A prime dilemma in our relationship with pets is the lack of verbal communication. Our goal is to enable our pets to communicate their needs and wants with us through smart devices. By monitoring data on our pets collected by HomeKit, iPhone and Apple Watch we get a better idea of their well being and come one step closer to bridging the communication gap. Some of the features included in Dog House are a calendar, medical id, nutrition monitor and social sharing page that stimulate the everyday dog owner to become even more engaged. Our vision is to make the life of both pup and owner more enjoyable by increasing ease, convenience and connectivity. Our system facilitates owners to keep up with their pet’s health and wellness through a concise and convenient platform under the familiarity of the apple umbrella.

Smart Devices Made Smarter

Dog House integrates the technologies of HomeKit, Apple Watch, and iPhone to create a seamless flow of communication and data. As part of our HomeKit ecosystem for Dog House, we utilize smart devices for a more comprehensive glance into the lives of our pets. Our smart toys record the duration and frequency your pup engages with them for a more detailed study of activity. Further, our responsive food and water bowls provide an analysis of eating habits. Both of which sync to your Apple Watch and iPhone to keep you in sync with your pet. The app is designed to work through your iPhone in a function similar to Apple Health. We created graphics for our app using PhotoShop and InDesign with the goal of being consistent with Apple’s aesthetic. Next, we uploaded them to Marvel and Indigo to create an interface that resembled a functioning app. Our team is currently working with Xcode to develop a real app that we will present at Slam.

A Little Bit About the Team

We were inspired for the vision of Dog House by all of our loving dogs at home. As long-time members of the NMIX community we have realized that all of the most dynamic technology comes from having insight to a common need and utilizing technology to make lives more cohesive and easy. With Dog House we saw a prime example of an integral aspect in our lives, our dogs, that hadn’t yet been incorporated into a conclusive technological ecosystem. Our goal in creating Dog House is to not only improve the life of you, the owner, but also the health and well being of your dog.

Jordan O’Connell

Copy Editor

Jordan is a fourth year student at UGA from Annapolis, MD. She will be graduating in May 2016 with a major in Public Relations, and a certificate in New Media. She has loved being part of the New Media Institute and her fondest memory of the NMI was in her 2020 Intro class when she and her group received bonus points on their exams for dressing up as Steve Jobs the week before Halloween. It represents the innovative spirit and excitement that has been incorporated in each NMI class she has taken.

Kirby Massengale

Technical Designer

Kirby is a fourth year student from Nashville, TN. She graduates from UGA in May with a Management Information Systems major and New Media Certificate. Her favorite aspect of the NMI has been her involvement in TEDxUGA.

Alaina Plummer

Illustrator + Branding

Alaina is a fourth year advertising major with a certificate in the New Media Institute. Her favorite class in the NMI was Shamp’s 2020 Intro class when her team “Safe Soles” won the New Media Elder Ventures Competition.

Taylor Hensley

Visual Designer

Taylor is a fourth year student at UGA majoring in Public Relations with a certification in New Media. Her favorite aspect of New Media was learning to build and code websites and apps.

DogHouse was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Discover Your Ideal College Experience

How much time did you spend in college as a new student trying to figure out where you belong? Don’t you wish you had a roadmap to guide you through those first few months? inUGA is an app designed to give students a personalized tour of their campus that introduces them to places, clubs and local events that will best fit their interests. Our app will help students turn their new school into their new home in no time.

Here are the basics:

inUGA is an app that allows new students to interact with their campus in a fun narrative format that is relatable to their real college experience.

• The student goes through a storyline on UGA’s campus that highlights the major buildings and landmarks that most students visit.
• Throughout the narrative, the student is asked questions, presented with items and has conversations with virtual students, allowing them to create their own personalized experience.

• Based on the student’s decisions within the narrative, the app collects data about the student’s interests and personality.
• At the end of the narrative, the app uses this information to present the student with a list of places, events and activities in Athens that will best fit their interests.

Why?

Being in a new place can be scary. If you can think back to your own college experience, you will remember this. If not, let’s consider Martha’s experience. Martha is from Wisconsin, she likes music and nature, and she wanted a change of scenery after high school so she applied to UGA. But when she got to campus, not knowing the school, the town, or anyone, she was terrified. She didn’t know any of the school’s traditions and she was too scared to ask anyone about the music scene or the best outdoor trails. Then Martha used inUGA, and she learned that the Foundry has underrated cheap concerts and that the Athens Botanical Gardens has beautiful hikes. She made great friends through her interests, and by the end of her first semester, Martha had her routine down. With inUGA, Martha made UGA her new home.

How?

inUGA uses interactive narrative technology to take the user on different paths based on their choices. Within the program, there are over 10,000 unique tour routes that are determined by the users’ choices along the way. In order to give the most accurate suggestions to each user at the end of the tour, we have identified five general personality traits: artistic, athletic, adventurous, social, and studious. Every decision the user makes, such as what places on campus to visit and how they respond in conversations, assigns them a point for one of the personality traits.

We classified our suggestions into three tiers: very interested, semi-interested and not interested. At the end of the tour, if a personality trait has more than two points, the user is classified as very interested in that trait and is presented with a full list of relevant suggestions. Exactly two points means the user is semi-interested and receives a shorter list. Under two points, and the user is not interested and will receive no suggestions relevant to that trait.

We created inUGA using ASAPS (Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System) Advanced Stories Builder program. It was developed by Hartmut Koenitz and allows for a personalized experience for every user. We hope that our app will help students forge their own unique path at UGA.

Meet the inUGA Team

Beth Anne Watts, our producer, is a senior Mass Media Arts major who is interested in pursuing a career in live television production or music business.

Patrick Grant, the technical lead, is a senior Mass Media Arts major interested in Web Development, Video Production, and Social Media. He hopes to be in charge of a company’s digital media efforts.

Elizabeth Dickerson, our content manager, is a junior Public Relations major interested in good food, good comedy and good people. She hopes to work in new business development or account management for an advertising firm one day.

Andrew Lee, the graphic designer, is a senior majoring in Mass Media Arts. He is focusing on video production, specifically post production, so he hopes to find a job in the movie industry.

inUGA was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You want to support the local economy and you do your best to eat healthy, sustainable food, but who wants to sacrifice those precious few hours of sleep on a Saturday morning to rush to the farmer’s market? Eating local produce offers countless benefits, but it’s not always convenient to buy. We’ve created an app for Locally Grown, a service connecting a group of small farms and gardeners around Athens to offer delicious, seasonal produce. Choose from the weekly produce options and have it delivered just a few days later. Locally Grown: building a community around fresh, sustainable, local food.

Our App

The Locally Grown app simplifies the way you purchase local food. The available produce will be updated weekly, and be organized by type for easy navigation. Users can add their choices to a shopping cart, and pay for their purchases through the app. In addition to making your life easier, we want to connect our users with the community of farmers in our area. Users will be able to share photos and discuss the local food they’ve purchased through the community forum. Our weekly features will announce community events, highlight local farmers and share seasonal recipes. This application will be made using Swift, and we’ve created a website to promote our app as well as provide more information on the benefits of eating local.

Our Purpose

We’ve become so removed from our food that we buy in grocery stores. We don’t know which farm it came from, when it was grown, and seasonality has no effect on its availability. Locally Grown brings delicious seasonal produce from the farm to your kitchen as quickly as possible to ensure you have the freshest, most nutrient-rich food. Farmer’s markets are a great way to interact face-to-face with the farmers who are making your food, but their limited hours and locations can be inconvenient. We want to remove the restrictions of buying local food. Our food delivery service is mutually beneficial to both the consumer and the vendor — farmers will expand their business to new buyers, who, in return, will be getting the best ingredients possible. Through the community forum and weekly features, we will foster a sense of community among the Locally Grown users. The Locally Grown network was created in Athens in 2005, and has expanded to over 300 markets from Canada to the Caribbean. Although widespread, the service is still largely unknown. We want to promote Locally Grown through the creation of our app, which simplifies the ordering process, and brings the community together around one thing: local food.

Weekly Features

We want to highlight what makes buying local food important: the people. Whether it’s a friendly farmer growing veggies, or making a dish for a family potluck, the delicious seasonal produce is the center of a community that cares. Our weekly features and community forum bring our users together to enhance the Locally Grown experience.

Our Team

Monica Padilla

Major: Advertising and New Media Interdisciplinary Certificate

Skills: Adobe Creative Suit, digital marketing, magazine layout and selling related to advertising such as media space

Interests: Graphic design, photography, entertainment industry and marketing

Sarah Sporn

Major: Public Relations and New Media Interdisciplinary Certificate

Skills: Writing, photography, Adobe Creative Suite and design

Interests: Photography, travel & tourism communications, social media, blogging and event planning

Carrie West

Major: Consumer Journalism with New Media Interdisciplinary Certificate

Skills: Basic HTML/CSS, Adobe Creative Suite, photography, communication, writing and design

Interests: Travel, social media, photography, new media technology, blogging and startups

Malinda Inthirath

Major: Agricultural Communication with New Media Interdisciplinary Certificate

Skills: Social media marketing, HTML/CSS, Adobe Creative Suite and Swift

Interests: Graphic design, digital marketing, startups, social media and social media marketing strategies

Locally Grown was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Imagine being inside roaring Sanford Stadium during a football game, or walking around the iconic Arch for the first time without even setting foot on the University of Georgia campus. UGA Experience can give you an immersive preview into your life as a future Georgia Bulldawg.

Features of UGA Experience

On the UGA Experience website, any person interested in touring the campus from afar can choose between two types of videos to get a better sense of what education and student life are like at UGA.

The first video type is the “campus tour” video which follows a UGA tour guide, who explains some of the basics of campus to visiting students, such as where the dining halls are located, where the best study spots are and where resources like the library are located.

The second video type is the “campus experience” video which is a brief, vine-like video that captures the essence of a student tradition or special aspect of UGA’s culture. These videos focus on traditions such as football games, ringing the Chapel Bell, riding a UGA bus, jumping in Herty Fountain or visiting Snelling Dining Commons late at night to ‘snellebrate’.

To make the videos as life-like as possible, UGA Experience use a 360 degree camera to capture campus life in all directions. Any UGA Experience user can turn the point of view of the film in any direction and see a new detail of the experience.

Why UGA Experience?

Picture a senior in high school named Jacob. Jacob is really interested in applying to the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia and wants to visit campus before he decides to apply. But, Jacob has one problem…he lives in Orange County, California and his family doesn’t have enough money to afford a college visit across the country.

UGA Experience is the solution to this problem many students like Jacob face when applying to universities. Our goal is to allow any student, no matter the distance or the financial status, to experience what being a Bulldawg is all about.

How UGA Experience was created

UGA Experience is a Wordpress site that hosts 360 degree video tours of the University of Georgia’s campus. Our team used the 360Fly camera to film the video and used the camera’s proprietary editing software to create the finished video packages hosted on the website.

Our group decided to host these videos on a website because the 360Fly software has strict guidelines of where the video can be exported to, and a website was the most accessible and user-friendly host are group could think to use.

The videos will also be compatible with Google Cardboard, a portable virtual reality headset, that allows viewers with access to the headset to experience the videos in virtual reality. For those without access to Google Cardboard the videos will still be 360 degrees using YouTube360 and will be clickable in order to see the entire surrounding areas.

Meet the Team

UGA Experience is a tight-knit group of five members, each with their individual roles and responsibilities.

Megan Mowers

Role: Producer

Year: Senior

Major: Advertising

Hometown: Savannah

Megan works to keep the team on task and project oriented. Megan also works alongside Lindsey, working on the content for UGA Experience. Megan aspires to work for an advertising agency or event planning company in Atlanta, Ga after graduation. She hopes to continue to use the skills and techniques she has learn from the New Media Institute and Advertising to help with website development and social media accounts.

Jake Schaffer

Role: Visual Designer

Year: Senior

Major: Animation

Hometown: Marietta

Jake loves the skills he has learned in animation during his time at the University of Georgia. He enjoys the challenge of working with new graphic design software and thinking creatively to make something unique. He dreams of becoming a video game designer after college and is currently working with an independent company called Skelefactor on a game named Bugspeed Collider as an animator. He hopes the skills he has gained through the NMI will help him better broadcast his varied skillset to the global market.

Josh Smith

Role: Technical Designer

Year: Senior

Major: Entertainment and Media Studies

Hometown: Bainbridge

Josh works as a technical designer for the UGAexperience project. Josh has worked extensively on the UGAexperience website. Along with the technical work on the project, Josh also worked as a videographer, working the 360Fly camera. Josh expects to graduate in May 2016 and is hoping to find work that allows him to produce digital content for large audiences. Whether it be video or written work, Josh enjoys all creative endeavors and looks forward to seeing where his experience at UGA will lead him.

Thomas Smith

Role: Technical Designer

Year: Senior

Major: Mass Media Arts

Hometown: Lawrenceville

Thomas works as the co-technical designer for the UGA Experience group. Thomas works heavily on coding the group’s website and on editing and working through the technical aspects of the 360Fly camera and virtual reality headsets. As a Mass Media Arts major, Thomas works constantly on filming and editing. Thomas has filmed and edited extensively for different Grady College films and hopes to become a film editor or perhaps pursue a career in Media Law when he graduates. Thomas hopes the experience he has obtained with technology through the New Media will give him an advantage when it comes to his field.

Lindsey Conway

Role: Content Producer

Year: Sophomore

Major: Publication Management

Hometown: Alpharetta

Lindsey works as the content producer for the UGA Experience group. She is responsible for creating content such as written material for the website, blog posts, Twitter and Facebook posts and any written material for the presentation such as hand-outs or posters. Lindsey aspires to be a journalist, hopefully covering a health, environment or culture beat. Lindsey has enjoyed learning about new media in the NMI. She has learned skills, such as coding, that she never thought possible and hopes to apply these skills to her future career in journalism.

UGA Experience was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your life, in one place.

We know how stressful a busy life can be. From soccer practices, to work and social events, it can be hard to schedule in those much needed moments together as a family. The HomeScreen Apple TV app is created with the always on-the-go family in mind and acts as your own personal planner by comparing schedules and displaying weather, all located right in your living room.

Features

We’ve reimagined how planning is done in the digital age. Running on Apple TV 4, the newest device that now has its own app store, HomeScreen is designed to make your life easier by providing a hub for all of the information most important to you and your family. The main screen of the app provides a large five-day calendar view for planning or checking each day’s schedule. Different colors represent each family member and HomeScreen compares each family member’s schedule together to make suggestions. These suggestions answer common questions that families may have when trying to coordinate. What time can my spouse and I get lunch? Will the kids need a jacket on their hiking trip this weekend? The bottom of the screen allows you to click through to the other features, weather and photos. The weather button replaces the calendar view with a five-day weather forecast, while the photos button brings up photos in an iCloud shared folder so families and friends can look at vacation photos together.

Why

There is no easy way to sit down and quickly compare your calendar to multiple people around you. Most people keep their personal calendar on one of their devices, but comparing your calendar to others in your family involves a lot of scrolling or finally resorting to paper when trying to make a list of important information. You could all speak over each other while reading off your paper planners or feverishly swap between your calendar and notes app, but those are not great options.

HomeScreen solves this problem by automatically comparing everyone’s schedule together, answers your tough questions, and even suggests events at times when you aren’t busy. HomeScreen also has other insights like measuring the amount of traffic, comparing it to an estimated distance from home, and then suggesting an optimal time for dinner.

How

Using Xcode, Apple’s interface for building apps, our team created a native TVOS app for the Apple TV. New to most recent iteration of Apple TV’s is an app store, allowing third-party apps to be downloaded to the device. The app imports weather from a weather service and your calendar and photos from iCloud after signing in with a family sharing account.

We will also make use of the multidirectional gestures included on the new remote. We will use the swiping gestures to navigate through the app and move between the photos.

Group

Evelyn Andrews

Programmer

Evelyn is a senior public affairs journalism major interested in making important news interesting and how technology advancements will affect the industry. Responsible for programming, Evelyn is working in xCode to build the app and applying javascript to make it work.

Alana Casto

Content Producer

Alana is a junior mass media arts major interested in film editing and the effect new media and technology have on the ever-changing film business. Alana is responsible for creating content for the app, including the promotional video and working alongside the Visual Designer to create graphics.

Maddie Carswell

Visual Designer

Maddie is a senior public relations major interested in how the media is adapting the growth of technology. Maddie is responsible for visual design and the overall look of the app, which includes developing the graphics with the content producer.

Eric Daniel

Producer

Eric is a senior marketing major with a love for the unlimited possibilities that come with new media technologies. He is responsible for the overall vision and management of HomeScreen, and works alongside the rest of the team to ensure seamless presentations and an excellent finished product.

HomeScreen was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Did you have a Tamagotchi when you were younger? We did and we loved taking care of it. When we were brainstorming ideas for how to get out there and motivate someone to exercise, we thought to create a virtual pet. From there Pet Steps was born! Pet Steps is the virtual pet conveniently located on your wrist via the Apple Watch.

When you download Pet Steps you are given a new puppy that requires you to fulfill three needs for it to be happy and are used to calculate the mood of your puppy. The more often you meet its needs the happier it will become. If you don’t meet them then it will become sad and apathetic.

The three needs that must be completed to maintain a happy puppy are to go on walks, to be played with and to be given treats. The ways these are accomplished are below.

· Walk Yo Pet: Walk your new puppy while going on a walk or run yourself. Using the pedometer on the watch we are able to keep up with the distance you ran along with the time that it took you to do it.

· Play time: Play with your pet when you reach your goal of exercise for the day. Play time is based off of meeting the exercise goals that you have set for yourself.

· Treat Yo Pet: You set the goals for how many calories to burn. When you reach checkpoints within your goal your puppy earns a treat. We are able to calculate how many calories you burn with the accelerometer on the watch. This combines the heart rate monitor, pedometer and movement monitor to tell you how many calories you have burned.

So why create Pet Steps? We wanted to make an application that was more than just data and more than a notification that pops up. We wanted to motivate you to exercise with encouragement and not with the shame of not meeting a daily goal. To complete this goal we decided to merge the nostalgia of a virtual pet with the health benefits of a fitness app to create something that is fun while also helpful in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Our team is made up of four amazing women.

Carley Gainous is from Cairo, GA and is majoring in Advertising. Her role in Pet Steps is as a content producer, as lead programmer for the application and she also helps to manage our team.

Anna Hensley is from Ellijay, GA and is majoring in Magazine Journalism. Her role in Pet Steps is as Producer, helping create content and is the programmer for the website.

Samantha Woo is from Cumming, GA and is majoring in Art X. She is one of our programmers on both the website and the app itself. She also helps with the graphic design for Pet Steps.

Ina Zaprynova is from Plovdiv, Bulgaria and is majoring in Art X. She is the head Visual Designer for Pet Steps.

We hope to see you at the New Media SLAM on December 4th, 2015 and show you just how Pet Steps is going to change how you view fitness.

Pet Steps was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“A healthy lifestyle can be a SNAP with SNAP Pea.”

The goal of SNAP Pea is to be an interactive, engaging smartphone app that helps educate qualifying individuals on healthy eating habits. With recipes, store locator, nutrition facts and our shopping cart game those who qualify for federal SNAP food aid will be able to make better food choices for themselves and their families.

With the empowering nature of SNAP Pea, users can be educated on their food choices and escape the cycle of obesity plaguing our state.

But what can SNAP Pea do?

SNAP Pea is a companion to the SNAP federal food program, meant to help educate program recipients.

Our welcome screen allows the user to enter either a guided tour or skip ahead to access our other features. Our beautiful graphics, designed by our graphic designer Taylor Stalling, make healthy eating an exciting and colorful concept.

Above is our landing page, a report on the user’s current balance and a total of past Shopping Cart scorecards.

What is a Shopping Cart scorecard though?

SNAP Pea is a companion for the SNAP shopper, and is intended to be used as a guide to their real-life shopping experience. Shopping Cart scores are a fun tool meant to give an easy to interpret score based on the healthiness of the items bought with SNAP.

As they select items from grocery store shelves in real life, they can add it to their virtual shopping cart, and find out more about their individual selections via our search and barcode scanner functions.

Shopping Cart is a gamification under the shopping cart icon. Once you have made your selections, and added them to the cart, the screen will look like the one below.

They can then press the Checkout to Receive Score function, and get a report card that tells you how healthy your shopping decisions were.

The gamification is our main educational function, but we also have other functions including suggested healthy recipes…

and a store locator which uses maps to find nearby grocery suppliers who accept SNAP benefits.

Our full walkthrough is here.

Why make SNAP Pea? Who is it helping?

Our client, the people at SNAP-Ed, are looking for a product that can help educate the SNAP eligible on healthy eating habits.

Georgia is the 18th most obese state in the country, with 30.3 percent prevalence of adult obesity. 36.8 percent obesity rate of those with incomes lower than 25,000 (SNAP eligible income is roughly 20k).

We believe our project can help reach a portion of the population who are both eligible for SNAP and have mobile devices. Since Georgia has the highest mobile penetration rate for people eligible for SNAP, smartphones are accompanying SNAP users to the supermarkets. We think our app can help reach those users and give them the tools to beat the high odds for obesity, plaguing the SNAP-qualifiers and those who fall below the poverty line.

How are we doing this?

We are using basic Swift coding, led by our coder Stephanie Lennox, to create a beta product. We are also using the lessons found at Teamtreehouse.com as supplemental material so the rest of our group can assist. It is our hope to have the shopping cart game completely operational by our final presentation.

Who are we?

SHELBY MASTERS

Project Management and Account Executive

Shelby Masters is a public affairs journalism and psychology major from Johns Creek, Georgia. She serves as the the opinions editor for The Red & Black and is a social media coordinator for Gamma Phi Beta sorority. Her passions are golden retrievers, Kanye West and creative writing.

STEPHANIE LENNOX

Lead Development and Photography

Stephanie is a fifth-year magazine journalism and photojournalism major graduating in December. She is also receiving a New Media certificate as well as completing a Theatre minor. Stephanie currently works at Adult Swim as the production intern and has an intense love for cats.

TAYLOR STALLING

Graphic Design

Taylor is a senior advertising major and entirely right-brained. Lover of graphic design and all things creative, she’s counting down the days until she can officially start her career doing what she loves.

MICHELLE LI

Content Development

Michelle is a fourth year advertising student, who has long aspired to be a copywriter, which, in this case, means before she even binge-watched Mad Men. She is fascinated with the ever-evolving movement of technology and hopes to combine this with her love of writing in her future career.

For any further questions, please check out our website: http://snap.mynmi.net

SNAP Pea was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Get your head in the clouds

The Pitch

Have you ever caught yourself staring out of a window wishing you could fly? Flock can help you get there.

Now, thanks to drone video, any pilot can see the world from above, but it’s time to take it one step further. It’s time to share the feeling of flight on a large scale. How? Flock is a mobile community where you can join immersive, 360-degree flight experiences at the touch of a button. You don’t need a drone. But if you have one, we’ll help you share your view with the world.

Features

On startup, you’re presented a selection of drone videos from around the globe, filterable by popularity, proximity, or by pilots you follow.

The world map view taps into Flock’s geotagging capability and enables the user to travel the world by selecting 360º drone videos by geographic location. This unparalleled viewing experience is made available by Google Cardboard, a simple, affordable virtual reality viewer that can be bought or built by anyone. Virtual reality and drones are a match made in heaven, just load your phone into the Cardboard viewer and you’ll be airborne. However, if a user doesn’t have a virtual reality viewer or does not prefer it, a flat, 2-dimensional viewer is still available in the app.

While the Flock experience is immersive, it’s not isolating. Users can express themselves through their profiles, and connect with other viewers and pilots by following, liking, and sharing what they see on a connected social media account. If you are a pilot with a 360-enabled drone, it is easy to upload your own drone footage within the app to share with the world. You can even mark your videos with highlights so viewers can quickly access outstanding segments of your flight.

At Flock, we live by the mantra “be all there.” This is not a video database, this is an unparalleled viewing experience enhanced by Google Cardboard. One swipe, and the view changes from standard video to virtual reality compatible. Just load your phone into the Google Cardboard set (or similar device), and you are airborne. But if you don’t have a headset, or find virtual reality dizzying, our single-screen high-definition flights are still here for you.

While the Flock experience is immersive, it’s not isolating. Users can express themselves through their profiles, and connect with other viewers and pilots by following, liking, and sharing what you see.

Why

It’s 2015, and each day brings a gold rush of new technologies that may be intimidating at first. We seek to make drones, and their unique aerial perspective, accessible.

Many pilots are already exploring the world in new ways, and it’s time to give them the opportunity to showcase their talent on a global platform. Our platform. Flock.

How

Coding: Swift

Drone of choice: DJI Phantom 2 Vision+

360º Video: 360 Fly

Group

Andrew Wardlaw: Tech + Video Director

As the tech and video director, I am responsible for maintaining and sharing a technical understanding of our drones, the creation and delivery of the project promotional video, and the development of any hardware or software required for our project.

Emily Dardaman: Producer + Branding Director

As producer, my primary responsibility is maintaining open channels of communication, both internally and with our audience. I make sure we’re on schedule, keep our brand consistent, and ensure quality control. Together with the other members, I work to guide the team in group organization, communication, and culture.

In branding, I oversee the development of a distinctive brand voice, which affects everything from web design to content editing. Practically, a brand is composed of design elements and copy, and that falls in my non-exclusive role as well.

Katie McKenzie: Web Design Director

As the director of website design, I’m creating the website for our platform, keeping it consistent with our overall brand and look. I will work closely with Emily on branding, Andrew with any technology or programming, and Kelsey Ann with all content.

Overall, I ensure all design related material is cohesive and consistent with the website, logo, poster and promotional video. Our website is a critical component of our brand, and I’m excited to be able to showcase it to the world.

Kelsey Ann Williams: Content Writer + Presentation Director

As the content writer and presenter I will be writing most of the content for the website, posters, and communicating our ideas for the Drone project. As the lead presenter I will be planning most of our class presentations and the final presentation. I enjoy speaking in front of people and communicating ideas in an organized and effective way.

Flock was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

THE PITCH

Wouldn’t it be great if you could hop on your bike in Athens and ride for miles without having to worry about traffic? We think so, too. That’s why we’re stoked about The Firefly Trail, a developing greenway in our own backyard. More than just a trail, Firefly is connecting communities in North Georgia by providing residents with an outlet for safe, healthy, and eco-friendly recreation. But that’s not all. Trails like Firefly have proven successful when it comes to stimulating local economies by enhancing vitality and opportunities for commercial development and tourism.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks don’t know about the Firefly Trail. This lack of awareness and financial support makes it challenging for the trail reach its full potential. Here at Team Firefly, we address these issues and offer a simple solution: rebranding.

To do this, we’ve taken advantage of new media resources to create a new and improved website, social media strategy, e-newsletter, and crowdfunding campaign, all with the hope of building a brand that gets the word out in our community and gains financial support for the trail.

THE PATH

The Firefly Trail is a proposed 39-mile multi-use trail beginning in Downtown Athens, Georgia which follows the Athens Branch of the Georgia Railroad and connects Athens-Clarke, Greene, and Oglethorpe County by means of a walkable, bikeable pathway and green spaces before coming to an end in Union Point, Georgia.

THE PROBLEM

As of now, the Firefly Trail is struggling to generate buzz in the community — something that’s crucial for its future existence. That’s where we come in. We’ve partnered with The Firefly Trail Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization comprised of community representatives, with the ultimate goal of increasing awareness for the trail. Together, we’re dedicated to making the dream of the Firefly Trail a reality.

THE PLAN

Since our main goal is to establish a brand for the trail, rather than focusing on any single technology, we believe our client will benefit most from a multidimensional approach.

To start, we’re transferring content from their current site to a responsive, mobile-first platform that transforms a simple list of facts about the trail into a compelling, interactive narrative.

Our social media strategy includes a revamped e-newsletter, complete with the unified visual aesthetic we’ve created for the Firefly Trail and have already implemented on the new website. Additionally, we’ve developed an integrated social campaign to raise awareness on Facebook and Instagram. Creating a strong media presence across multiple platforms is crucial for us to effectively accomplish our goals and meet the client’s needs.

Lastly, seeing as rails-to-trails projects are largely built by, and for communities, we’re exploring a crowdfunding campaign via CommunityFunded.com. This approach would connect the local community with our trail in order to raise financial support for future developments.

THE POTENTIAL

The Firefly Trail is one of many new and emerging rails-to-trails projects nationwide. These trails come with a long list of pros — more transportation options, positive effects on public health, environmental conservation, historic preservation, and a stronger sense of community identity — and no real cons to speak of, with the exception of cost. Our group’s primary objective is to give Firefly something worthwhile and, hopefully, help give back to our community in the process.

THE PEOPLE

Nathan Bohannon: Project Manager

Grace Ferzely: Social Media Director

Rachel Kopp: Content Director / Copywriter

Jackson Moore-Ragusin: Tech Director / Programmer

Rachel Wu: Art Director

Thank you for taking interest in our project. Please join us at the annual NMIX Slam event on December 4th, 2015 or check out our website at http://fireflydemo.mynmi.net.

Firefly Trail was originally published in 2015 Fall NMI Capstone Projects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.