An app for dairy tourism and culture

Ligia Fernanda Rojas Sarmiento and Diana Carolina Páez Castiblanco, students of the Systems Engineering program at the Ubaté branch of UCundinamarca, created a mobile application for the Android operating system to promote the culture of milk production characteristic of the municipality and the promotion of tourism in the region.

In the augmented reality app, we find a main character named Eba, a Holstein cow, the primary cattle breed found in this region of the country and known for its milk production. The students decided to name the cow Eba as a tribute to the cultural and historical roots of the municipality, which was formerly called Ebaté.

“In the application we can find strategic points of the municipality, the user can access and with their camera scan the image that works the same as a QR code and start to see the models of the cow and its main systems that contribute to the dairy production processes,” explained Ligia Fernanda.

The app also includes an informational component detailing each of the cow's systems, general breed characteristics, the production process, care and feeding for each animal, and potential diseases. This makes it suitable for all types of users, including students and professionals.

As Ligia Fernanda explained, they also included a multimedia module, which contains videos they created that support all this information. These videos show models with the help of a veterinary zootechnician who delve deeper into all the information and address it in a very concise, short, and simple way so that the whole topic of dairy production is easier and more understandable for the user.

Ubaté is known as the dairy capital of Colombia, which is why this application highlights the culture and roots of the region, as well as encouraging tourism by inviting people to discover these types of places that have great gastronomic quality. "Many times people don't know it completely, and the countryside is really a very big economic source for many people here, and with the app we want people to better understand the processes and take ownership of the culture," said the future engineer.

The goals are always clear

From the beginning of their studies, Ligia Fernanda and Diana Carolina had promised to do their thesis work together. For five years they studied and kept in mind the goal of always being outstanding students, learning and developing solutions for people, developments where the results could be seen in the community.

They strengthened their knowledge in all areas, in the use of language tools, they thought about this application and realized that they had all the knowledge they acquired at UCundinamarca to do it and they started working on it.

“Each of the subjects we studied was key to carrying out this project. Here we put into practice everything we learned in our training, and without a doubt this experience has effects on our professional lives. In a few days we will graduate and we must find a job where we can demonstrate the quality of professionals we are,” explained Rojas Sarmiento.

The student from the Systems Engineering Program at the Ubaté campus concluded that the tools provided at UCundinamarca were fundamental to her professional development, helping her determine her career path. She added that these types of graduation projects allow her to demonstrate her preparedness for life's challenges. She acknowledged that achieving her goals requires never losing sight of the objective: "From the beginning, my friend and colleague and I decided to be diligent, learn a lot, get good grades, and thus be able to contribute our knowledge," Ligia Fernanda concluded.

To learn more about this application, you can download it on your Android device from the Play Store; it's listed as "Eba la Vaca".

More news from the Ubaté branch at the News Agency