Positions available: 1-2

Best Friends Obedience Training for Pet Dogs offers private instruction in the home for people and families seeking help in training their dogs or solving dog behaviour problems. Proprietor Andrew Perkins also teaches dog training and puppy training classes as a contract trainer for a local training school.

My training consultancy is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for 1-2 computer science students or teams.

The primary focus for the student will be:

• Application Development - Creating a fully-functioning application for use on iOS and Android devices, with a management interface for desktop.
  

Our goal at the end of this experience is:

• For the student(s) to create a fully functioning application.

The Problem to Solve With This Application:

While trainers encounter a wide range of unique personalities and problems with which dog owners seek help, the vast majority of the notes they leave behind summarizing exercises or projects for the client to review are similar. Trainers have written and re-written the same notes to countless clients, or have created templates of exercise notes that are customized and printed before appointments to be handed to the client at the end of an appointment. Often these prepared notes won't match the direction the conversation ends up taking, and customized new notes are handwritten, or re-created and emailed after the fact.

The result is a lot of wasted time and poor efficiency for the trainer.

While each trainer re-uses the same information several times a week, the specifics of the techniques and how they describe them are unique to the trainer.

Vision of a Solution

I'm looking for someone to build an app for mobile devices (iOS and Android) with a web- or app- based desktop management interface.

On desktop, to set the app up for use, the trainer needs to be able to type or paste a description of every exercise they might assign - it must be scalable so they can add descriptions as they discover new needs and exercises. Each becomes an entry in a modular "homework assignment builder."

An optional header and footer section could be created by the user in setup for branding, disclaimers etc.

The modules must be organizable into a directory tree as the trainer sees fit so they can be easily found and selected during a live consult.

Onsite, using a cell phone or tablet, the trainer needs to be able to enter the name and sex of the dog, and then select from a menu the modules representing the exercises to be assigned at that consult, so an assignment plan is created with the dog's name appearing instead of placeholders, with appropriate sex-specific pronouns. The modules need to then be editable on the mobile device for any slight customizations required. The resulting customized assignment is then emailed from the application (with the sender being the trainer's own email address) to the client's email address entered in the onsite session. A copy would be emailed to the trainer, for keeping records of what's been assigned.

A separate tool for the desktop portion would allow trainers to create custom homework packages for group classes. Again from a menu of prepared exercises, the trainer would be able to assemble a list of assignments for Week 1, Week 2 etc... then enter the names of all participating dogs and their sexes, so the homework printouts or .pdf files would be the same list of exercises, but customized for each participating dog. A customizable cover page where the school can load its logo, enter program name (Beginner, Advanced, Puppy 1 Puppy 3 - you'd have to be able to keep several programs on file) and the participant names for a custom cover page.

We will plan to communicate with our virtual intern using these communication tools: (list expected channels - eg. Riipen messaging, email to best.friends@sympatico.ca, Zoom! meetings as needed)

Student's primary contact: (Name, job title)

Secondary contact: (Name, job title)

Guidance is available regarding outcomes and functionality. This business has no expertise in application development itself.