Idea-Dump

Dump of cool ideas I think people would use

License

This idea dump is Creative Commons licensed, as found in the LICENSE file.

This doc contains cool project ideas I believe people would use

Inspired by: https://github.com/Divide-By-0/ideas-for-projects-people-would-use

Motivation

Project Based learning is a great way to learn new concepts as applying your knowledge to solve problems and deliver an incremental positive impact is the most satisfying feeling in the world. Every human does have the power to make positive change in this world (no matter how small nor big). It's easy to just live life passively, but if you want to deliver purpose and leave a legacy that future generations could benefit from, why not try to deliver some good. I'm assuming that the audience for this doc are people who are venturing in the software engineer track or are aspiring software engineers and related fields as well.

In the software engineering track (or broader computer science field), anyone can come up with an idea, but what sets you apart is the ability to execute and deliver. That's what's more important (on top of being a good team player and communicator). You can totally build some solutions/apps relating to these project ideas solo, but it'd be much cooler if you can get a team of friends, peers together who are invested in the vision and build something together. You not only get to practice being a good communicator, but also you can make friends as well :)

Tips for coming up with good ideas (taken from my understanding and what I've gathered across multiple medium blogs and stuff)

• Part of coming up with a good idea is identifying the right problems. We can always overengineer solutions to basic things, but keep your eye on solving the right problems

• What are pain points that you face in your daily life? Like, what gives you that feeling of "I'm so annoyed when I have to do X, Y, Z. Why can't there be an app or automated way to do it?"

• What gives you the feeling of "Wouldn't it be so great if X technology/app can have Y feature?". Why not build that out?

If you guys do take an idea from this doc and build out a project, please credit @karkir0003 and @farisdurrani for it! These ideas are listed in no-particular order. Happy building 👷

Ideas

• An actually good app to keep you off distracting sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder, Tiktok, etc
• An app that allows you to take a scan of a fruit or vegetable from a grocery store and predict its freshness (imagine Google Lens experience, but it could predict how "fresh" or "in good condition" a fruit or vegetable is at the grocery store) just with your phone's camera. Why?? One way to get "supposedly" fresh vegetables or produce could be through HelloFresh, Amazon Fresh, etc, but not everyone has time or money for that, so what if you could optimize the quality of the produce you get from the grocery store through your phone.
• An extension in Duolingo where you not only identify what exercises you find difficult, but what particular concept/grammar patterns you need more review on (can probably extend this idea further in a direction like Khan Academy)
• Haircut Personalizer: Given a picture of your face/hair, suggest the best haircut for you and find the salons in the area that can provide it to you
• Scooter Finder: Given that there are a ton of micromobility options out there (spin, jump, lime, bird, etc), build an app that takes your location and finds the cheapest, available scooters near you based on distance, electric/non-electric, cost, etc
• Micromobility Transport Subletter: I love to ride bikes/scooters etc. Build an app where someone can put a timeslot in which they aren't using their scooter/bike and a user who is looking for a bike/scooter can request to "borrow" person's micromobility gear for a set duration and the owner of the equipment would get paid per hour. Essentially a side gig type business. Would definitely need to handle the case for people who "lose someone else's equipment or damages it"
• Smart Trash Can (need to build physical thing/app) that tracks what you're throwing away in the garbage and the corresponding app would show how much food and stuff you are wasting and suggest better alternatives. This would help minimize waste and help foster people's creativity
• Build a cloud application that scrapes Uber/Lyft data based on the location you're at (historical) and show a map displaying probability of getting uber ride within X minutes. This can help optimize how long you need to wait for an Uber/Lyft
• Inventory management system for your house (like be able to use your phone to scan barcodes of products you have in your house that way you can see how much of each thing is available). Need to handle special case for produce b/c that doesn't necessarily have a barcode. You don't ever have to be like "did I buy tomatoes last week"? You will also need to keep track of things like "how much of each thing did you use" to make your tracker more reliable
• A more interactive way to study concepts for a test than the traditional "boring" Quizlet. Build a better version of Quizlet or a more interactive way to review material. Who really wants to pay premium for Quizlet??
• A ML algorithm that takes in a lecture video and shows the timestamps at which the professor/instructor brings up major key points. (or more simply video --> transcribed text --> most important keywords --> map to timestamp). Wouldn't it be great if you can build an interface to automatically generate multiple choice quiz questions that actually test your understanding/retention of the lecture material based on the main points from the lecture (instructors who make the lectures should be able to create their own "quiz questions"/check in quiz)
• An extension that takes youtube videos you find and assigns a score as to how politcally charged the content is (eg: PragerU would have a high score b/c it's a political youtube channel). This can help users find "unbiased"/objective content on what they want to learn about
• Given a long contract, have the app pull out the TLDR summary of the contract that way there aren't any gotchas. Extend this idea to the "fine print" you see on a website in that tiny font. This should extend from Terms of Service Didn't Read
• Bot that can look at a chart and assign a score based on how "misleading" it is. This solution would help to point out misrepresentations in the facts people are sharing in the news
• Simplify.jobs is an extension that autofills applications for jobs. What if you can build a bot that goes through Simplify.jobs and applies to all job postings
• Sometimes, it's annoying that insurance companies give a list of providers who "supposedly" cover your plan and that information is misleading. Build a bot that can ingest a list of providers and auto-email or auto-call the number listed. If email response is bounce back or number not in existence, auto email the insurance company with the provider whose contact information is wrong. If a provider says "we don't currently accept plan X", the bot should auto-email the insurance company with a message saying "provider X actually doesn't cover plan Y". Maybe try integrating the bot with an app like Sydney Health. This would save a ton of inconvenience on the user's end
• An actually good/reliable Piazza metric that assigns an "engagement" score to students who deeply engage with a course instead of asking random "clickbait" questions to boost metrics like "number of questions asked", "number of comments made to all posts", etc just to earn the measley "5% in participation credit". As a former TA, I wish Piazza had a tool like this
• For Educators: Given a set of exam questions on canvas, build a bot that autochecks if a similar exam question type is available on google/chegg. This can help professors design exam questions that students can't exactly google. Maybe have the bot assign a score as to "how well does exam test student's understanding"
• Chrome Extension that can automatically create a course that you made on one learning website (eg: Udemy) in another learning website like edX, Coursera, Udacity, etc so that creator doesn't have to copy/paste text
• As an extension, we can create a one-for-all Deploy button for posting social media posts or videos to multiple platforms at once, e.g., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
• See if you can mine a dataset from say Squarespace/Wordpress and try to build a dashboard that can identify the trending themes/purposes of websites being built through the platform. What insights can you uncover with such dataset? Let your curiosity run wild
• Auto-Generate Table of Content page in Google Doc along with auto-infer your headings/subheadings
• An app that allows you to sync up your purchase history (in a secure way though) and gives you personalized notifications through scraping sites like RetailMeNot, Honey, etc to find "good deals for related purchases". Say you buy a bag of tomatoes from Publix and you pay for it, the app should automatically sync your receipts and identify "hey Bob, i noticed you bought tomatoes from publix. You could have gone to Target and gotten the tomatoes for 30% the price as there was a sale". It would save you time on having to search forums for coupons and stuff. Think about this like "personalized version of Honey extension" except it knows your purchase history stored in a secure way
• Slackbot that gives tips on how to send impactful and succinct messages to your coworkers (instead of saying just "hello")
• A version of Stackoverflow that incentivizes the responder to give positive, encouraging and non-snarky/toxic responses to a question no matter how basic it is. This could help make a community that incentivizes people to act with kindness when answering questions on the forum and reward good behavior/etiquette/choice of words in a response instead of just clickbaity toxic responses