project assignment

Gergő Pintér, PhD

gergo.pinter@uni-corvinus.hu

the project

An event organizer company entrusts your software development company to create a choreography designer software for drone shows. They have just bought 768 drones and they want to be able to do smaller-scale drone shows on parties, birthdays, and weddings.

The software should be able to manage the position of every drone in a given space in respect of the time. Every drone is capable of switch on RGB LEDs with a given light intensity. The software should be able to manage not just the position, but the state (light) of the drone.

The software generates a trajectory for every drone that it will follow.

Your task is to design this software.

drone show example

Drone Show at Sydney (2023) by Leoxiong | CC-BY-SA

example: Dragon Boat Show with 1500 drones in Shenzhen, China
background: How Drone Shows Work
by Julius Moorman

choreography design in focus

the client company wants to design and operate the show
the software has to focus on the choreography design
- not the software running on the drone
you can assume there’s a software (SDK) from the drone manufacturer
- which deals with the hardware
- it is an external “component” of the software system

architecture sketch

There are some dependency between the modules. For example, the shape design produces reusable shapes, so the animation depend on the a shape design.

shape design

responsible for creating models/shapes/objects
- saving, loading, modifying
3D sculpting
the exported model is used by the animation component

DEMO: Nomad Sculpt – a web-based sculpting and painting application

animation

responsible for animating premade models
- in a 3D space and time
handles a timeline, which consist of frames
each frame holds some models in a position, orientation, color
allows modifications of a model
computes transformations between frames

2D DEMO: Motionity – a web-based motion graphics editor

animation GUI mockup

geo-mapping

responsible for determining the location of the drone show
- using GPS coordinates
the height as well so the result is a 3D hull
saving/loading/editing area/volume description files
mapping the animation trajectory to real world (GPS) coordinates
DEMO: geojson.io

operation

responsible for starting / stopping the show
monitoring the drones during the show
check the status of the drones / environment
makes it possible to preview the show
initiate uploading trajectories
- show choreography
download telemetry from the drones

not architecture, sketch

data flow sketch
drone vendor SDK can be assumed
lines between the software and the drone are not part of the assignment
this figure is not comprehensive!

shape model

animating by relocating the points

animating by modifying the skeleton

first seems easier on the developer side, but results tedious work for the choreographer animating an object consisting hundreds of points

using a solid body model, later the model is converted to a polygon mesh

DEMO: Mesh2Motion, Maximo

not architecture, sketch

more like usage roles than actual components in terms of architecture

there are shared components practical to implement once
this figure is not comprehensive!

component sketch

each color is a responsibility area
this figure is not comprehensive!

remember: it’s like gardening

there’s a plan how this software would look like
yours can be different and it’s perfectly fine
you’re free to choose any solution that doesn’t conflict with the description
- which is deliberately underspecified
the assignment values the process and the effort you put in work

contents – outline

introduction
- what the software is – practically the project assignment
- team members – students working on the assignment
stakeholder identification
methodology
detailed requirements
- functional requirements
- non-functional requirements
diagrams and models
prioritization of requirements
constraints and assumptions
acceptance criteria
appendices
version history and approvals

diagrams

user stories
- user story maps
first 3 level of C4
flowcharts
data flow diagram if needed
optionally data structure description
- could be UML
UI mockups

diagrams details

overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand

– Ben Shneiderman

create a user story map in details for your team’s set of features
- for example the choreography design
- you don’t have to detail every single role
- because each team has its own responsibility
create container and component diagrams (C4)
- you don’t have to detail other team’s components,
- but display them to give an realistic overview of the system
- illustrate every component and the connections between them

work in agile methodology

imagine how you would use a software like this
- what functions would you need
identify dependencies between the features / modules
plan sprints with usable increments
deadline: 2 December 2026 (week 12)
- when the team also presents the work as a presentation (10 minutes)
practical classes are workshops
- main source of feedback from the instructor
NO CODING

suggested software for

the document: Google Docs
user story map:
flowchart: Google Drawings, draw.io
C4:
1. excalidraw with a C4 plugin
2. Google Drawings
3. create C4 diagrams in draw.io
UML: excalidraw, draw.io, PlantUML

excalidraw has excelent shared work functionality

submission

you have to submit the main design document
you may indicate who was responsible for each part
including every diagram, and UI mockup
- please keep every version of the diagrams and attach them to the submission as I would like to see the evolution of your design
and the presentation

you have to submit these (zipped) by 2 December 2026 via Moodle, when you also present your work

it is enough to upload it by one person from each team

presentation

the presentation should contain the purpose of the software component
- based on the project assignment
- but with your interpretation
team members
- with responsibilities
the introduction of your design
- from high level to the low level (according to C4)
- describe the overall design
- highlight on the interactions / interfaces between the components
- attach UI mockups when necessary

presentation

you may separate the presentation by target audience
- for the customer almost as if you wanted “sell” the software and introduce it from the user’s perspective
  - C4 system context, use case, user story flows with UI mockups and explanation
- and a more technical part focusing on the internal structures
  - zoom into the system as C4 modelling propagates
  - detail the interfaces and the environments where a software will operate

questions?