For my Computer Science capstone project with Meijer, my team and I made an iOS application and website to explore the benefits and challenges of using iBeacon technology to display promotions to users walking around in a Meijer grocery store. The project took 4 months.

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I was responsible for the implementation of the iOS app, which was written in C# using Xamarin. As the project was undertaken when iBeacons were pretty new, there were not many accessible mobile APIs to support their usage at the scale we were looking for. Therefore many of the technical challenges on the project were around acting on low-level Bluetooth signals in the Xamarin environment. 

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The mobile application was supported by a robust and mobile friendly website for Meijer employees to manage product promotions that the iBeacons would send to the phones. Overall, it was a fairly complex system and was a good proof of concept that location-based product promotion can really work in the real world.

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Our team won the Design Day Urban Science Sigma Award for best all-around Capstone Experience. You can also watch a fun video here to learn more about how our system works and read more about the project here.