MyPR: UWC students beat out 11 universities to win top honours in Standard Bank’s hotly contested IT challenge:
The winning team are Daniel Collins, Liam Doult and Kyle Jordaan. Photo: Simon Wilson
On just a handful of hours of sleep and endless pots of coffee, three University of the Western Cape students won top honours in Standard Bank’s national IT challenge, with an application offering voice-activated online banking.
For those who are blind, suffer from arthritis or similar disabilities, or even for people who are illiterate, the banking app, which the students created in just three days, could offer them a shot at financial independence.
The three, second-year BSc Computer Science students Kyle Jordaan and Daniel Collins, and their first-year team mate Liam Doult, broke a stranglehold on the contest which has been won nine times by the University of Cape Town, once by Stellenbosch University, and once by Wits University.
Effectively, the three were shut up in a Johannesburg hotel room from the morning of Saturday, August 20. They only learnt what their task would be at a briefing at 9am, and by the time they emerged on Monday at 1pm they were expected to be ready to present to the judging panel.
The annual competition, the Standard Bank Corporate Investment Banking Information Technology Challenge, is hotly contested by 12 South African universities, with a R100 000 prize up grabs for the winning university, and up-market tablets for the team members.
Team coach Reg Dodds, a computer science lecturer at UWC, said he almost wept with pride when the youngsters, two aged just 19 and one 20, were announced as the winners.
He explained that each team had to design and build an application, known more commonly as an app, which used the Amazon Echo, a device which handles speech commands, then responds orally.
“Once the Echo is switched on, it listens to spoken commands, which are then processed by computers in the Cloud. The commands are then turned into text, which the app can process,” Dodds said.
Collins said the three had had to qualify for the final earlier this year, and when they found out they had made it, had begun some preparations.
“But just two weeks before the competition, we found out the format had been changed. It was no longer about solving problems, but about application production.
“That’s when we started to believe we had a real chance to be placed somewhere near the top.”
Doult added that they decided to focus on creating something that would make internet banking applicable to all, even those with sight problems, other disabilities, or even those who were illiterate.
“Called Easy Bank, our app makes the process so easy that users can read in their pin, then instruct ‘Alexa’ to transfer, say R200, to a specific beneficiary.
“We know Standard Bank is taking the initiative in respect of new technology, and we believe the future of such technology is moving towards voice recognition,” he said.
Collins said they slept for a maximum five and a half hours over the competition weekend.
“The hotel staff were literally bringing in jugs of coffee. We weren’t interested in anything but caffeine and sugar,” he laughed.
After presenting their app to the judging panel on the Monday night, the shocked students were named winners. Dodds said they earned the university R100 000, and each won a Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet worth more than R19 000.
Congratulating the team on their “magnificent” performance, Dodds said executives at Standard Bank had asked all three youngsters for their contact details.
“We worked really hard and it was difficult, but we enjoyed ourselves as much as we could,” said Jordaan.
“Standard Bank has told us that if they do set about working on the app with a view to implementing it, they will invite us to work on it with them. So we’re very excited about that possibility,” he said.
For more information and interviews please contact Petunia Thulo at 012 554 6270 or email at petunia@hippocommunications.com
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: Western Cape – MyPR EngagingHippo
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