CS Postgrads Take Second Place in Regional Innovation Fund Competition

A project developed by three Computer Science postgraduate students took the prize for second place in the regional round of the Innovation Fund competition announced on Monday 2 November.

The prize was awarded to Mosiuoa Tsietsi, Zelalem Shibeshi and Fred Otten for their proposal to support food and beverage providers through the innovative use of mobile technologies.  Their product is called IntelliDesk, and is targeted at the retail food and beverage market, which is worth approximately R700 million in South Africa.

The system works by allowing users to create online profiles which are stored on the system's servers.  Restaurants can then subscribe to these profiles in order to improve customer experience when food orders are received.

IntelliDesk is based on free and open source software such as Mobicents and Asterisk to create commercial software that can then be sold to the restaurants.  The system supports multiple forms of user-interaction such as web, SMS, telephony and mobile applications.

The goal is to provide convenience for the user through supporting many forms of interaction, coupled with a flexible user profile system, and to improve customer satisfaction at the restaurant by providing useful information to the cashier about the customer.

The first prize was awarded to a biochemistry proposal for water purification.

The two winning proposals will go forward to the national final competition in March next year.  The teams will also attend a workshop in January to help them turn their proposals into detailed business plans.