INTERACTour wins Pervasive Systems Centre prize

‘INTERACTour’, an interactive tour guide for new students or visitors to Southampton, was the winner of the design competition which formed a major part of the new second year course on software development.

The course was created by Dr Steve Gunn and Dr Mark Weal with the aim of providing students with the skills to develop larger software projects, using the latest technologies. This year’s students, working in groups of five, were tasked with designing and developing a ‘Southampton Navigator’ to target a GPS-equipped mobile platform using the C# programming language.

The course culminated last week with a conference which included a keynote talk by Professor David De Roure of the ECS Pervasive Systems Centre, outlining his vision for the future of mobile computing.

Each team then presented their design and poster to compete for the Pervasive Systems Centre design prize. In a very strong field, the special features of the winning INTERACTour were its ability to orientate a new student or visitor to an unfamiliar area by providing an overview of that area’s facilities, using maps, summary descriptions, audio, icons, and photographs, all delivered to the user through the use of GPS co-ordinates. The students who designed INTERACTour were: Danvir Guram, Luke Lowrey, Adam Muncey, Nicholas Tudor, and Thomas York.