Bagging lost-n-found

Ocho Uno (a.k.a., 81) is a cloudy application for managing lost-n-found stuff.

I had for years thought of projects for students to work on until I ran out of ideas. Then it occurred to me: Why should I have all the fun? So for the first time I asked students to come up with their own projects. In turn, they produced some very interesting proposals and ultimately demonstrations, one of them being a system for solving the lost and found problem. They saw the solution as going beyond merely recovering things but furthermore reducing the anxiety of misplacing valuable belongings.

The first student version was an exploration of the concept, namely, the development process. They ultimately implemented a desktop rich client as a prototype per the requirements but we knew it had knockout potential as a mobile app.

I never bored of the idea. They definitely had something that which, at least conceptually, had everything a killer app tended to have: simplicity and utility. Nobody needs to explain it.

Who has ever lost keys, smart phone, book, hat, or rabbit foot? Who has ever found what they were looking for and wasn't deeply grateful?

The lost & found project is an further experiment that builds on all these ideas and experiences.

However, in my view such a system is not about just reporting and/or recovering lost objects. There are the problems of bagging (literally, gathering), matching, cataloging, collating, and often, recycling unclaimed and sometimes unwanted paraphernalia of the throw-away world.