Domenic Bianchi's
Portfolio
Tulip - iOS Developer Co-op
Work Terms 1 & 2
© Tulip
© Tulip
© Tulip
As part of the Cooperative Education program at the University of Guelph, my first two work terms (Summer & Fall 2017) were at Tulip as an iOS Developer. Using Swift, I assisted in the development of a new core framework for the company and used it to create a custom iOS mobile-point-of-sale application for Indigo Books and Music.
Tulip - Software Developer Co-op
Work Term 3
As part of the Cooperative Education program at the University of Guelph, my third work term (Summer 2018) was once again at Tulip, this time as a Software Developer. During this term, I worked on the Authentication team to migrate legacy code, implement new authentication related features (such as PIN login) and fix bugs.
ABOUT ME
My name is Domenic Bianchi and I am in my final year of studies for the Bachelor of Computing, Software Engineering Honours Co-op program at the University of Guelph.
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Throughout this portfolio you will find some of my personal projects I have worked on over the years and work term reports from the various positions I have worked in as part of the Co-op program. In the reports, I describe the unique experiences and skills I have developed throughout my work terms and how I applied the knowledge of software development that the University of Guelph taught me within workplace environments.
ecobee - iOS Developer Co-op
Work Terms 4 & 5
As part of the Cooperative Education program at the University of Guelph, my final two work terms (Winter & Summer 2019) were at ecobee. During my time at the company, I worked on implementing new features, learning about different agile methodologies, and becoming more comfortable creating user interfaces through code rather than Storyboards.
Farm To Fork
Farm To Fork is a website created by 30 undergraduate School of Computer Science students at the University of Guelph in 2012 with a goal to increase the quality and quantity of fresh food donated to local food banks by providing donors with real-time needs.
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As part of the CIS*4500 (Special Topics in Computer Science) course, I worked with Professor Dan Gillis and another student to develop an iOS app for Farm To Fork. The app uses the existing backend and is able to show a map of all participating food banks, provide information regarding each food bank, and display the needs of each food bank.
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There is also a watchOS companion app and SiriKit extension that allows users to quickly view the needs of their preferred food bank.
GryphEats
GryphEats is an iOS app created as for the capstone project in Software Design V (CIS*4250). This was a group project that included four students and required us to create requirements and mockups, as well as provide weekly demos to the professor throughout development.
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Students on campus at the University of Guelph could use this app to order food ahead of time. For example, a pizza from Creelman Hall usually takes about 10 minutes to make after ordering. Instead of having to wait in the cafeteria area, a student would use this app to order their pizza and once it is ready for pick up a push notification would be sent to their device. The student can select which ingredients they want included, use Apple Pay or their credit card to pay (for the purposes of the project, credit card payment was mocked) and check to see the status of their order.
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GryphEats also has an iPad version of the app meant to be used by staff that work on the food station. Once a student places an order, the order will instantly appear on the iPad app where the staff member will press a button to acknowledge and order and later indicate when the order is ready for pickup.
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There were a total of four group members for this project. Two worked on the backend, the third member worked on the iPad version of the app, and I worked on the student facing portion of the app (some of the screens are shown above).
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Since this project started in September 2019 and SwiftUI was recently announced, we decided to learn SwiftUI and avoid using UIKit as much as possible. We also used GraphQL for communication between the servers and app. I had learned about GraphQL during my co-op work terms at ecobee; however, at the time ecobee wasn't using any GraphQL "subscriptions". As a result, my group learned how to implement "subscriptions" for two features:
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Have the iPad app listen for new orders
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Staff members could use the iPad to app to mark a menu item "out of stock". If an item is marked out of stock, the student facing app would immediately remove the item from the menu to prevent students from ordering that item.
Ontario Ski Report
Ontario Ski Report is an iOS app that displays the ski conditions and trail status' of popular ski resorts in Ontario including Blue Mountain, Mt. St. Louis Moonstone, Horseshoe Valley, and Glen Eden. The app parses data directly from the ski resorts to get the most up to date information, therefore allowing ski and snowboard lovers to check out the conditions at the ski hills before heading out on the road. Overall, the app provides a faster way to view the ski conditions (rather than having to go each resorts website).
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In addition to displaying the status of trails, the app has the capability to generate a visual representation of which trails are open in the form of a trail map.
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There is also a Today Widget that displays a condensed report for all ski resorts that the app supports (such as open trail count, open terrain park count, and new snowfall).
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A WatchKit (watchOS) app also allows users to view a condensed report; similar to the Today Widget.
Bike Share: Toronto
Bike Share: Toronto is an iOS app that displays information about the Bike Share Toronto program. Hundreds of bike stations are located throughout the city and anyone can rent a bike all year around. Using real-time data provided by the City of Toronto, this iOS app shows the locations of all the bike stations and how many bikes and bike racks are available at each location. It can also provide directions to any bike station.
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The purpose of creating this app was to learn about the native MapKit framework provided by Apple rather than using the Google Maps SDK.
GryPhone
During my first year of university in 2015, I created GryPhone with a group of three people using the agile methodology.
GryPhone was an iOS app designed to help ease the lives of students on campus which was downloaded over 5,000 times.
Creating this app required me to implement Core Data, the Google Maps SDK, and frameworks created by open source contributors. Also, throughout the development process I took advantage of using Git and ticket systems to help keep the project organized.
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The app was capable of tracking Guelph Transit buses in real time and predicting their arrival at bus stops. There was also a built in mark calculator that students could use to save their marks and monitor how they have been doing over the semesters. Finally, a campus map provided walking directions to any building on campus (using Google Maps SDK).
In 2016, I collaborated with university executives from Hospitality Services to add a feature where hospitality menus and operational hours would be displayed in the app.
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In 2017, I continued discussions with university execitves from Admissions and Athletics to explore other apps that could be created to help both prospective and current students.
