FORM 2

THE PATENT ACT 1970

(39 OF 1970)

&

THE PATENTS RULES  2003

COMPLETE SPECIFICATION

(See SECTION 10  RULE 13)

1.TITLE OF THE INVENTION :

Project-X

2.APPLICANT

NAME : SOFT CORNER

NATIONALITY: A REGISTERED PARTNERSHIP FIRM

ADDRESS : SOFT CORNER
‘ARUNANJALI’  H.A.E. CO-OP. HSG. SOC. 
NEAR PAUD PHATA  OFF KARVE ROAD 
PUNE – 411038  MAHARASHTRA  INDIA
3.PREAMBLE TO THE DESCRIPTION
PROVISIONAL

N / A COMPLETE

The following Specification particularly describes the nature of this invention and the manner in which it is to be performed :

4. TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention Project-X is an innovative social networking platform that will benefit all the stakeholders  viz. the students  academia and industry.

The intention of this network is to make the information of all the past projects available to the upcoming batches of students. This is to enhance and provoke collaboration between students  colleges and experts having similar interests - thus benefiting all in the end.
5. BACKGROUND

During several brainstorming sessions  we listed some issues that most of us had felt – especially during our initial days at work…
a. In some cases we realized that we were aware of different technologies but lacked the imagination or knowledge of how it could be used in solving real life problems
b. In some cases  we were not abreast of the technology itself  as we did not have good or enough guidance on the same during our college days or while doing our final year projects
c. Many times  we also did not know the good practices or industry standards used while implementing different projects
d. We also realized a rather startling fact that out of thousands of projects being done every year  not even 1% of the projects move beyond the drawing board to be developed into a marketable  commercial product. In fact  these projects were more often considered only as “something that needs to be completed” for the purpose of attaining a degree.

It was quite shocking to know that the industry considered less than 25% of graduates (engineering and others) to be readily employable – even when many of these courses were designed to be on the lines of a finishing school – or terminal courses  after which it was expected that the candidate takes up a job. It was stated that an average of 16 weeks of further training was needed to be given by the industry  to any new joinee  before s/he was considered employable. The total cost attributed to this exercise in India was quoted at $425 million in the software industry alone!
All the above facts made us home into this situation – as our problem area.
On further discussion  we came up with several probable reasons for this situation…
a. Most of the placements take place in the penultimate year i.e. even before the industrial training or internship part of the curriculum has started. This leads to several problems…
• The students don’t know their interest area at this point in time and take up the job that is offered with the highest salary  rather than looking at the type of work being done in that company
• The industry has only ‘marks’ as the measure for short listing candidates and they have no clue whether the candidate is good in actual practical work
• Since the industry is recruiting one year in advance  they don’t have a clue of what work will be offered to the candidate. In fact  they also are not in a position to know the health of the market and their industry after one year – which might lead to offers being withdrawn (which has happened in the past)
b. Students too lack motivation in doing a project sincerely  since their job offers don’t depend on it. It is more often looked at as one more subject to clear and score marks towards getting a high percentage  rather than looking at it as a practical experience towards making them job worthy.
• One of the fallouts of this apathy is that students copy a project from a previous year or two – as is – and submit that as the final year project. There is no way today to find this out as there is no digital repository of projects.
c. Students of a college end up getting the same guides that have guided their seniors in the past  because they don’t have a platform or reach to a wider set of guides or industry experts.
• This results in very similar projects being offered  with a one-dimensional view point.
• This also results in projects of a college having a tilt towards a certain technology or domain – just because there is no one available to guide or even talk about other domains
• According to the University rules  colleges are supposed to ensure that a project that has been done in the past n years (3 to 4 years) is not done again by another student. However  there is no such mechanism available for the colleges to check  as there is no single searchable digital repository to verify. The only things available are thousands of thick bound printed project reports  which are impossible to search through.
d. Yet another problem faced by students is due to lack of availability of the guide at all times. Many times  the industry experts or guides are required to travel on behalf of their companies. During this time  the project almost comes to a standstill because there is no follow up from the guide or if there are any questions or problems faced by the students  there is no one to solve them.

6.SUMMARY

Project-X is a social network that connects academia  industry and students through the medium of projects that students work on  during their graduation and post-graduation.
The intention of this network is to make the information of all the past projects available to the upcoming batches of students. The students would be able to look at past projects and work upon enhancements  able to plan their projects well using timelines of previous projects in similar domain. Students that have graduated in the immediate past would be able to help their juniors during the project in a more organized fashion  while teachers and project guides would be able to keep track of the project and its progress.
People from the industry would be able to float new ideas on Project-X and can solicit interns for implementing these and also look at potential employees based on the projects completed by them.
The enthusiasm of the students and the expertise of the industry and teachers will be brought together on the same platform thus taking more ideas from the drawing board to the development and implementation of commercially viable products. Colleges would be able to monitor projects and see that they aren’t copied from previous years – thus reducing plagiarism. Inter collegiate communication would increase due to the social networking aspect. The industry would be benefitted in terms of reduced training costs and more targeted recruitment that could result in better retention of employees. It would find it easier to locate good students even from second and third rung colleges thus benefitting all the stake holders.
Functional description of project-X
In the current situation  the only way a project is available is in the form of a printed and bound project report. We have now changed this. We have broken up the project into several modules and made it more students friendly and modern in its approach. This enables the students to relate more to the content and also enhances the way they understand the given information.
o Groups:
A group of students  start interacting with Project-X through the ‘groups’ feature. In this feature  students can define their student groups and add their domain of interest  technologies that they are conversant with  previous academic projects that they have worked on  and unlimited number of custom fields. This essentially gives them the facility to create a group resume that can be used to approach industry experts for guidance.
o Ideas:
Industry professionals / teachers are the ones who guide students for their final year projects. They are the ones who have ideas for proof-of-concepts that need to be developed. This feature provides them a space to define their idea  again with the help of unlimited number of custom fields  and add it to the library of open ideas that exists on Project-X. Groups can then apply to the idea  based on its description. Through this module itself  a guide can shortlist group(s) to work on the idea that s/he has posted and convert the combination of idea and group into a project profile.
o Profile:
This is the landing page of any project that is selected. This shows all the information of the project at a glance. This typically contains headings  under which there is a concise paragraph(s) of information. Along with a pre-populated list of about 15 headings  users can add as many custom fields as they like. It is essentially a detailed summary sheet of the project. The usage of this page is to give the user a gist of the project without delving into how it was performed. It is also possible to add comments on a project profile.
o Privacy Settings:
IP (Intellectual Property) is a very serious issue when it comes to projects. In order to avoid trampling on rights and legal issues  we have implemented separate privacy settings for each element that makes a project in our system. It has been kept very granular  so that we can provide maximum flexibility to users and give them a facility to expose only the information that they wish to  to the outside world.
o Diagrams:
A typical project contains a large number of diagrams. Through this module we allow the members of a particular project to upload diagrams for a project. Descriptions and comments can be provided for the diagrams as well.
o Good Reads:
A lot of reading is involved in a project lifecycle. Usually students store all their material gathered from the web on disc in a very haphazard manner. Also  since these days  most students have laptop computers  the documents are distributed across computers – as each one keeps his/her own copy. This leads to a lot of re-reading within the group and also loss of information. With good reads  students get a defined place  coupled with their project information that allows them to put up categorized reading material with a summary  along with a link and several labels associated with each entry. Comments linked with good reads enhance and validate the reading material through public opinion and discussion.
o Discussions:
Modularization of the project results in a lot of block diagrams and whiteboard discussions. Through our discussions we take this aspect of the project online. This functionality consists of a real-time collaborative block diagramming tool coupled with chat. Versioning is integrated with discussions to keep a track of how a particular discussion progressed.
o Achievements:
Students like to share their achievements with their peers. This instills a sense of confidence within them and also motivates peers to do a good project.
o Status Updates:
Projects are entities of Project-X that can be followed by all types of users. This way projects that interest users can be tracked by them. Project members can reach their followers through this ‘status update’ functionality that generates newsfeed items for the followers.
o Let’s meet up:
This is a ‘one of its kind’ feature which allows an individual  to reach out directly to the students for possible funding in research / project or employment  based on the assessment of the students work - the project. We eventually wish to set a practice wherein recruiters make a more holistic assessment of the candidates through the project work undertaken by them. This should diminish the “package-factor” (offered salary) that the current pool of students are getting lured by and get distracted from working harder on their projects. Organizations or individuals could contact the students for a demo or a presentation of their project  or for interviews.
o Suggester:
This feature encircles the suggestive model of Project-X. The suggester engine aggregates data against number parameters for a student in the system. Based on the various activities that the students perform and interact with the system  data is collected and fed back to the suggester engine. Based on the data collected  the suggester prompts the student with timely suggestions and notifications that the student might be looking for at the given time. These suggestions will help students to be aware of the various milestones that should be achieved during the course of their project. Today  most of the students fall short in writing a technical paper  filing patents or present their project at national and international conferences. These play a vital role in adding value to the student efforts put in the project. This is where the suggester engine comes in and pushes students to take that extra step.
o Publisher:
This feature exploits the social networking aspect of Project-X to help students share their research with the community. Every bit of information  collected by the students – research papers  webpage links  articles  blog pages  etc.  could be managed under the Good Read category. These resources could be shared with other users of Project-X  over which  other users can comment and add further value. Once published  the article falls in the global published item pool of Project-X  which could then be searched by other users. This also acts as an assessment tool  wherein each article put up  could be rated by others.
Practical approaches:-
• Student centric approach:
Project-X mainly focuses on the student and assists him/her in taking a project from its idea to its completion. There are other project management sites available  but their focus is more on project and resource management rather than assisting a person in development or implementation of a project. In other words  they concentrate more on seeing that good software engineering principles or standard prescribed processes are followed. As against this  Project-X has student as the centre. Depending on the technology and domain chosen by the student  several previous projects of that nature are shown to him/her based on which the student can choose the most suitable one to follow in terms of time line  documentation etc. Not only that  but it also helps the students in formation of groups  searching interesting ideas for projects  getting assistance (when needed) from mentors or guides  searching documents uploaded by others in similar domain etc.
• Collaborative model:
Project-X assists collaboration in a very novel way. It allows students to communicate with students of other colleges  experts from industry  teachers and seniors from one’s college to form a technical network of friends. Each project group can publish their own readings  findings  documents  demos etc. that can eventually help all the upcoming students. Periodic updates and sharing also reflect the inquisitiveness and eagerness of the student – thus highlighting this important character of the group and student. It also allows users (students  teachers and industry) to rate different projects  documents and other artifacts – thus separating the good ones from the mediocre ones.
This library of information will get enriched every year with more and more documents and projects – and the good ones will be filtered to the top. The searches in Project-X will yield better and relevant results every year.
• Increase visibility and interaction:
By giving students ‘location aware’ suggestions regarding other similar projects  or access to available guides in the city  Project-X tries to increase cross-college interaction and tries to make students aware of what is being developed in his / her city. If needed  the candidates can personally meet these people for further discussions – as they are in the same vicinity.
• Uplift the standard of a project:
Current project management sites or portals focus on the correct implementation of a user""s project. They do not  or rather cannot  reveal information of other on-going projects. The social networking aspect of Project-X with respect to projects is probably the most innovative aspect. By sharing project related information in the student community  we aim at building an ecosystem that revolves around projects and helps improve the deteriorating project standards observed in recent years.
• Motivate students:
Good comments and critical acclaim on a student’s project would increase his/her motivation to work further on the project and take it to completion in the form of a commercially marketable product. Project-X would give a boost to innovators in coming up with product ideas and would also be a single window for investors to look at different options for venture capital funding.
• Improve Employability Index:
If employment opportunity is based on project work  having projects on Project-X will be a great opportunity for a student to showcase his/her interest and expertise to the industry. Project-X will give interesting project-based statistics to prospective employers  to assist them in shortlisting suitable employees. Our statistics will enable students from tier-2 and tier-3 institutions also  to have a fighting chance of being noticed by the best of companies. This aims at converting the ‘first-come-first-served’ placement scenario to a more relevant ‘best-fit’ scenario where both  employers and students  benefit.
Benefits
The following benefits accrue to the different stakeholders of Project-X…
o Students
 Students will have a good starting point for a project. More often than not  students are confused at the start on what should be a good final year project. They can look at previous projects done in different colleges to get a good insight.
 A good source of new project ideas could be the ‘future work’ from previous projects. Also  it would be possible to get in touch with the group that has done the previous project  on which s/he wants to build further.
 Open ideas that are put up by teachers / industry persons will be available for students to bid on and work on.
 Searching of sponsors and guides would be easier as they would be available in the system categorized by specialty and expertise.
 Students will have a better insight into ongoing projects in other institutes in the vicinity and also the entire country.

o Colleges
 Project coordinators from college can monitor the progress of each project in a better way and also can prod the students into action  in case they are lagging behind.
 This will improve the search ability of previously done projects to avoid duplication. This will also help reduce plagiarism.
 Colleges need to submit reports to the university regarding the progress of projects regularly. These will be automated in Project-X.

o Industry
 Industry will have easy access to a bank of students that will be ready to work on proof-of-concepts to be developed.
 Industry can look at the projects done by the students and decide to employ them based on their work and practical knowledge rather than only going by marks. This would result in reduced training costs and better retention of the employees – as they would be working in their area of interest.

 
9. I claim

1. Project-X is a social network that connects academia  industry and students through the medium of projects that students work on  during their graduation and post-graduation.
a) Project-X breaks down a project into several modules and makes it more students friendly and modern in its approach. This enables the students to relate more to the content and also enhances the way they understand the given information. The key modules are…
o Groups:
A group of students  start interacting with Project-X through the ‘groups’ feature. In this feature  students can define their student groups and add their domain of interest  technologies that they are conversant with  previous academic projects that they have worked on  and unlimited number of custom fields. This essentially gives them the facility to create a group resume that can be used to approach industry experts for guidance.
o Ideas:
Industry professionals / teachers are the ones who guide students for their final year projects. They are the ones who have ideas for proof-of-concepts that need to be developed. This feature provides them a space to define their idea  again with the help of unlimited number of custom fields  and add it to the library of open ideas that exists on Project-X. Groups can then apply to the idea  based on its description. Through this module itself  a guide can shortlist group(s) to work on the idea that s/he has posted and convert the combination of idea and group into a project profile.
o Profile:
This is the landing page of any project that is selected. This shows all the information of the project at a glance. This typically contains headings  under which there is a concise paragraph(s) of information. Along with a pre-populated list of about 15 headings  users can add as many custom fields as they like. It is essentially a detailed summary sheet of the project. The usage of this page is to give the user a gist of the project without delving into how it was performed. It is also possible to add comments on a project profile.
o Privacy Settings:
IP (Intellectual Property) is a very serious issue when it comes to projects. In order to avoid trampling on rights and legal issues  we have implemented separate privacy settings for each element that makes a project in our system. It has been kept very granular  so that we can provide maximum flexibility to users and give them a facility to expose only the information that they wish to  to the outside world.
o Diagrams:
A typical project contains a large number of diagrams. Through this module we allow the members of a particular project to upload diagrams for a project. Descriptions and comments can be provided for the diagrams as well.
o Good Reads:
A lot of reading is involved in a project lifecycle. Usually students store all their material gathered from the web on disc in a very haphazard manner. Also  since these days  most students have laptop computers  the documents are distributed across computers – as each one keeps his/her own copy. This leads to a lot of re-reading within the group and also loss of information. With good reads  students get a defined place  coupled with their project information that allows them to put up categorized reading material with a summary  along with a link and several labels associated with each entry. Comments linked with good reads enhance and validate the reading material through public opinion and discussion.
o Discussions:
Modularization of the project results in a lot of block diagrams and whiteboard discussions. Through our discussions we take this aspect of the project online. This functionality consists of a real-time collaborative block diagramming tool coupled with chat. Versioning is integrated with discussions to keep a track of how a particular discussion progressed.
o Achievements:
Students like to share their achievements with their peers. This instills a sense of confidence within them and also motivates peers to do a good project.
o Status Updates:
Projects are entities of Project-X that can be followed by all types of users. This way projects that interest users can be tracked by them. Project members can reach their followers through this ‘status update’ functionality that generates newsfeed items for the followers.
o Let’s meet up:
This is a ‘one of its kind’ feature which allows an individual  to reach out directly to the students for possible funding in research / project or employment  based on the assessment of the students work - the project. We eventually wish to set a practice wherein recruiters make a more holistic assessment of the candidates through the project work undertaken by them. This should diminish the “package-factor” (offered salary) that the current pool of students are getting lured by and get distracted from working harder on their projects. Organizations or individuals could contact the students for a demo or a presentation of their project  or for interviews.
o Suggester:
This feature encircles the suggestive model of Project-X. The suggester engine aggregates data against number parameters for a student in the system. Based on the various activities that the students perform and interact with the system  data is collected and fed back to the suggester engine. Based on the data collected  the suggester prompts the student with timely suggestions and notifications that the student might be looking for at the given time. These suggestions will help students to be aware of the various milestones that should be achieved during the course of their project. Today  most of the students fall short in writing a technical paper  filing patents or present their project at national and international conferences. These play a vital role in adding value to the student efforts put in the project. This is where the suggester engine comes in and pushes students to take that extra step.
o Publisher:
This feature exploits the social networking aspect of Project-X to help students share their research with the community. Every bit of information  collected by the students – research papers  webpage links  articles  blog pages  etc.  could be managed under the Good Read category. These resources could be shared with other users of Project-X  over which  other users can comment and add further value. Once published  the article falls in the global published item pool of Project-X  which could then be searched by other users. This also acts as an assessment tool  wherein each article put up  could be rated by others.
b) Practical Approach:-
 Student centric approach:
Project-X mainly focuses on the student and assists him/her in taking a project from its idea to its completion. There are other project management sites available  but their focus is more on project and resource management rather than assisting a person in development or implementation of a project. In other words  they concentrate more on seeing that good software engineering principles or standard prescribed processes are followed. As against this  Project-X has student as the centre. Depending on the technology and domain chosen by the student  several previous projects of that nature are shown to him/her based on which the student can choose the most suitable one to follow in terms of time line  documentation etc. Not only that  but it also helps the students in formation of groups  searching interesting ideas for projects  getting assistance (when needed) from mentors or guides  searching documents uploaded by others in similar domain etc.
 Collaborative model:
Project-X assists collaboration in a very novel way. It allows students to communicate with students of other colleges  experts from industry  teachers and seniors from one’s college to form a technical network of friends. Each project group can publish their own readings  findings  documents  demos etc. that can eventually help all the upcoming students. Periodic updates and sharing also reflect the inquisitiveness and eagerness of the student – thus highlighting this important character of the group and student. It also allows users (students  teachers and industry) to rate different projects  documents and other artifacts – thus separating the good ones from the mediocre ones.
This library of information will get enriched every year with more and more documents and projects – and the good ones will be filtered to the top. The searches in Project-X will yield better and relevant results every year.
 Increase visibility and interaction:
By giving students ‘location aware’ suggestions regarding other similar projects  or access to available guides in the city  Project-X tries to increase cross-college interaction and tries to make students aware of what is being developed in his / her city. If needed  the candidates can personally meet these people for further discussions – as they are in the same vicinity.
 Uplift the standard of a project:
Current project management sites or portals focus on the correct implementation of a user""s project. They do not  or rather cannot  reveal information of other on-going projects. The social networking aspect of Project-X with respect to projects is probably the most innovative aspect. By sharing project related information in the student community  we aim at building an ecosystem that revolves around projects and helps improve the deteriorating project standards observed in recent years.
 Motivate students:
Good comments and critical acclaim on a student’s project would increase his/her motivation to work further on the project and take it to completion in the form of a commercially marketable product. Project-X would give a boost to innovators in coming up with product ideas and would also be a single window for investors to look at different options for venture capital funding.
 Improve Employability Index:
If employment opportunity is based on project work  having projects on Project-X will be a great opportunity for a student to showcase his/her interest and expertise to the industry. Project-X will give interesting project-based statistics to prospective employers  to assist them in shortlisting suitable employees. Our statistics will enable students from tier-2 and tier-3 institutions also  to have a fighting chance of being noticed by the best of companies. This aims at converting the ‘first-come-first-served’ placement scenario to a more relevant ‘best-fit’ scenario where both  employers and students  benefit.
2. Project-X is an innovative social networking platform that will benefit all the stakeholders  viz. the students  academia and industry as described above in details.
Dated this 11th Day of July  2012

FOR SOFT CORNER

To
The Controller of Patents 
The patent office 
At Mumbai – 400 037
10.ABSTRACT OF THE INVENTION

Project-X is a social network that connects academia  industry and students through the medium of projects that students work on  during their graduation and post-graduation.
The intention of this network is to make the information of all the past projects available to the upcoming batches of students. The students would be able to look at past projects and work upon enhancements  able to plan their projects well using timelines of previous projects in similar domain. Students that have graduated in the immediate past would be able to help their juniors during the project in a more organized fashion  while teachers and project guides would be able to keep track of the project and its progress.
People from the industry would be able to float new ideas on Project-X and can solicit interns for implementing these and also look at potential employees based on the projects completed by them.

FOR SOFT CORNER