Side Project Expo (Spring 2019)

17 teams came to present what they’ve been working on at Convergent’s Side Project Expo this semester! We had hundreds of people stroll through to check out projects, including company representatives from Capital One, Amazon, and Citi. Some of the many projects that we saw are highlighted below.

Wampus Waffles

Wampus Waffles is a late-night waffle delivery startup that fulfills the need for high-quality, low-cost food after dark. They created an iOS application (using XCode and Swift) and are working to create a login system with a database to store information users. Currently, the team operates in out of their apartments, and they’re joining the Business Operations Build Team this semester to expand their tech and business strategy.

BetterKey

The QWERTY keyboard that’s ubiquitous today is not as efficient as it should be. BetterKey uses a genetic learning algorithm to optimize the layout of a keyboard for the least effort in typing. By pushing keys that are most commonly used to the 8 positions where your fingers naturally rest, their keyboard layouts require less effort to type on than the traditional QWERTY layout. Furthermore, this keyboard is customizable based on the usage of the user. BetterKey’s machine learning model can be trained on any data the user provides as their most common tasks to produce a keyboard layout that caters to their needs.

Convergent’s Fall 2018 Build Teams

We also had 4 build teams from last semester participate in side project expo! The SureWalk build team has been working since last semester to build an app for the popular UT service. Pictured below are 3 of the team’s members.

The RateMyLift team (from Computer Vision) designed an app that can analyze your form during common exercises to help avoid injuries. The UText team (from our Natural Language Processing build team) built a service to instantly connect students to the vast array of services available on the UT campus, and Language Longhorns (part of the EdTech build team) gamified the language learning experience.

Other photos from SPE