Four MIS Students place in Information Systems Project and Case Competition

Four Management Information System (MIS) students recently competed in the inaugural Information Systems Project and Case Competition, hosted by Ball State University. Representing The University of Akron at the competition was:

• Iulian Arsene, team captain and Chief Engineer
• Derek Lippert, Chief Product Designer
• Gary Ward, Business Analyst
• Ben Gump, Business Analyst

These four students conceived and developed the project during the spring semester, and successfully presented and defended it against 11 other teams at the competition. The team took First Place in both the Project and Presentation categories, and finished in Third Place Overall!

Dr. William McHenry, Associate Professor of Management, and faculty advisor for the group explained the teams product and the process they went through to be so successful in the competition;

“The team took on the idea of developing a USB device with a small screen that can transfer files wirelessly to a similar (or other Bluetooth-enabled) device without having to go through the intermediary of a computer. The team treated this as a new product development, selected a hardware and software platform, investigated and understood the capabilities of a small chip that would be at the heart of the system, wrote code to implement several classes needed to make the transfers work, documented their developed in a UML diagram, developed a 3-D model and animation to go with the presentation, created a lively and informative poster board that blew all the other teams away, analyzed the market position of their product using a SWOT and Five-forces analysis, priced what it would take for an initial proof of concept batch to allow them to move on to seek further funding, and explained all of this in a 20 minute presentation/Q&A session, including a small demo of bits being transferred from the development environment/chip ("the device" as we fondly called it) to an iPhone.”