In partnership with Visteon, the IEEE University Visvesevaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore, India, challenged more than 200 students to complete the university’s inaugural codeathon event on Sept. 22. Under the theme of “Women’s Safety”, participants had eight hours to develop an app that can act as a safety aid for women in distress.
As part of the university’s centenary celebrations, the CodeFury 1.0 event was open to students across India’s academic institutes, with the vision to implement an annual codeathon that aims to solve challenges faced by the developer community in its day-to-day activities as well as providing a positive societal impact.
Targeting current undergraduate applicants aged 23 or under, CodeFury 1.0 was open to individuals or teams of up to four – with prizes for the winner and the runner-up. More than 200 students signed up for the challenge, with participants encouraged to design their project using integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Android Studio, Netbeans, Eclipse, Notepad or other suitable text editors.
Addressing a problem statement set by the organizers from the UVCE’s computer society and developers from Visteon, participants were asked to design a web or Android app that could be used by women in case of an emergency. The pitched solutions were presented to a panel consisting of eight judges – six of which were representing Visteon.
The students approached the problem statement with enthusiasm and explored creative avenues for apps that can support safety by enabling women in distress to send emergency alerts or location details to contacts. One solution incorporated Amazon’s digital assistant “Alexa” in the proposed app.
Following the eight hours of allocated development time, the new app designs were presented to the judges who evaluated each contribution on the basis of the user experience and ease of interaction – all in the context of the overall innovation and creativity of the proposed app. As a testament to the complexity of the problem statement posed by the UVCE and Visteon, only 32 teams – comprising a total of 100 students – were successful in developing presentable solutions.
Probing the students with challenging questions and providing feedback throughout the event and final evaluation, the Visteon judges were impressed with the effort and creativity presented by the community of young developers.