This deviated from the original goals, but still fit in with the spirit of the app. Other featuresĭuring the development I had some ideas I wanted to see so I tried to add them as I went.
QUICKEN HOME INVENTORY FULL
ValidationĪs a proof that the model is feasible and the categories are a fit for a “normal” home (I guess I live in one, but who knows ) I started a full inventory of everything I own resulting in more than 1600 entries. Based on these matches a list of possible categories can be presented for the user to choose from. This allows to match wild typos as can be seen on one of the screenshots.
A reasonable implementation is to allow at most 2 of any of the following mismatches: insert character, delete character, change character, swap two consecutive characters. I used a trie data structure to store all the keywords and a clever matching algorithm to allow for character mismatches in during lookup. This means that whenever a new item is created, the category can quite possibly be predicted. The research turned out to be so deep that - as a side effect - a new feature arose: automatic category suggestions. The categories evolved a lot during these months and the final result is a multi-tiered categorization which means that the user can chose how deep they want to assign the categories. It still took a week to finish though as I double-checked the name of everything on the Wikipedia, online shops, the dictionary, and sometimes with my British girlfriend - remember, I was in Hungary, so the labels didn’t have the right words… my vocabulary grew quite a bit. This may sound tedious, but if you think about how many different brands and types of shampoos and soaps are there, you can quickly see that those two words cover almost a full aisle. Sometimes even that didn’t help so it goes to the closest subcategory.Īnother method that came up involved: going to the local supermarket, scanning all the aisles, and listing every item. If there was an item that didn’t fit, I tried hardest to find out why: by researching its origin, use, and etymology. If the group grew two big I looked for common properties between objects and split it up. The method I used was the following: list generic words that represent physical objects and then use logic and sometimes common sense to group them together. This resulted in months of research to have a “Categorize Everything!” list of things. I chose this path because this way users don’t have to worry about creating their own categories. The types of stuff are dynamically “hardcoded” and managed on the developer side. … and it turned out to be the really good so far, because I didn’t have to change the core ever since. I started implementing the app with a basic, but flexible database schema: I’m curious to see which of these pop up in reviews. specialized fields (color, brand, price, …).import/export from/to other apps (though there’s still ability to backup and share the full inventory).I set my goals to include the features deemed most important to me: The user interfaces didn’t meet my expectations and some felt like it was done as a homework. They also lacked features important to me, one was able to put items into categories and the other was able to create hierarchies of items. I found a few of them, but they were mostly for legal reasons so you have the item’s value in case of a sale or insurance claim I guess. I started looking at inventory apps in the Play Store. This also includes when my mother asks: “Where did you put your X/Y item?”. So when I moved home I set out to inventory all my belongings in my room and in the shed, so next time I need something I can just simply look it up. I sometimes even buy the same thing because it is hidden in the depth of a drawer. Whatever if left behind becomes forgotten.
I also experienced the same when I moved to the town I attended university and when I moved to London. As some weeks and months passed I totally forgot what stuff I have in London and where it is.
Up until then I was living in London, UK where I left some stuff in storage. The idea to create an inventory app came to me when I moved home to my parents in Hungary for a long vacation.
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