2023–24 Projects:
Advisor: Sneha Narayan
There are likely many times you’ve tried buy, sell or donate things around campus. Perhaps you were interested in buying a used bike, or finding someone who’d give you a ride to the airport next weekend, or figuring out who might want your old bed frame so you didn’t have to move it once you graduated. Chances are you would have tried to ask your friends if they had any leads, or maybe post your request on social media. While those strategies can certainly yield success sometimes, it’s likely that the set of people around you who could fulfill your request is larger than the set you were able to reach.
Many cities and campuses have addressed this need by popularizing the use of a web-based classifieds bulletin. Craigslist is a pretty famous example of such a system - however, there isn’t a Northfield/Carleton instance of that site. Additionally, it is likely that there are particular uses of such a system that might be more relevant than others at a place like Carleton. For instance, I’d guess that Carleton students might more often use a classifieds bulletin to seek rides to various places, rather than find a person who could walk their dogs. A classifieds site that works for the Carleton community would need to be thoughtfully designed so that its user base can quickly and easily find what they need.
The primary goal for this project is building a system that could potentially be used by the Carleton community for a variety of different classified ads. In particular, you will:
Background from CS 257 (Software Design) or equivalent experience will be relevant to this project. It would also be useful if at least a couple of students on the team have previously taken CS 344 (Human-Computer Interaction)