“Honestly, it started as a joke and (my friend and I) just said ‘let’s just make it and see what happens,” Babu said.

Babu ended up losing the competition, but this wasn’t the end for TicketTime. 

In September, Babu returned to the drawing board with his now improved mobile development skills, willing to give creating the app a second try. 

“I picked it back up because I was like ‘alright, I am a better mobile developer now, I kind of want a project' and then it just happened,” he said. 

Today, the app allows users to track MSU PACE through reports sent in by users when they see enforcement in a certain lot. Those parked in the lot with a sighting will receive a notification allowing them to log onto the SpotOn app and pay for more time in their spot. 

“I’ve been telling people if you get an alert just add 30 minutes to your time because chances are PACE will only be there for the next half hour,” he said. 

Babu’s friend who was previously ambushed by tickets is computer science junior Shaheer Khan. He is now an avid user of TicketTime due to his frustration with the cost of parking on campus. 

Khan became a teaching assistant for computer science courses last year, making him a frequenter of the STEM building on campus, where the only parking available nearby is pay-by-plate. This proved inconvenient for Khan, who would be in the building for hours on end, leading him to leave a long day of work to find a parking ticket waiting for him. 

“It was kind of frustrating because I would be helping students out for multiple hours or I’d be in a lab teaching students and had to come back to get a ticket,” he said. “Before it was $10 so it wasn’t the worst, but now that it’s $20 it’s just so expensive.” 

Khan said that even if he were to pay by the hour for the lot it would end up costing more than the tickets, he receives due to the amount of time he spends in the building for work. 

“At the end of the day, even when people are benefiting the community at MSU, you’re still getting charged for tickets and I think that was one of the factors as to why Keshav continued the development of the app,” Khan said. 

Khan said that he uses TicketTime every time he parks at the STEM building, allowing him to pay-by-plate via SpotOn when a PACE sighting is reported and helping him to not have to pay the high price of parking there for hours on end. 

“Even if it helps me cut down like one ticket or two tickets, that’s always going to be better than cutting down on zero tickets,” he said. 

A similar concept to TicketTime is a student-made group chat via GroupMe called 'PACE spottings.' The group chat has over 1,000 members and is where students will text when they see parking enforcement in certain lots across campus. 

Criminal justice and psychology senior Taliah Glidewell are a member of the group. She said that the concept of being notified of where parking enforcement is has helped her to get only one ticket this school year. 

“I don’t like to pay for parking. I want to know where they are and if I have to pay or not,” she said. 

Glidewell says that she helps others out by always reporting her own PACE sightings in the group chat.

“I think it’s a really cool concept,” she said about Ticketime. 

Babu said that the app utilizes crowd-sourced data, meaning that the more people that use it, the more efficiently the app will work. 

“The more people that are on it, that means more eyes out on campus, that means more people are seeing PACE, and more people are gathering information to help other students,” he said. 

Babu is trying to add more features to his app such as a machine learning algorithm that can predict what days and/or lots get the most PACE activity depending on the day of the week. 

The algorithm would work via a feature where students can report tickets they have received, gathering the data on when and where students can most likely expect to be ticketed. 

Babu’s main focus currently is trying his best to improve the app to help students and to make himself a better engineer. He said that he has been taking in feedback from users and trying to create a model that is easy to navigate, making the map on his app similar to the one seen on Apple Maps. 

“You really want to make the user feel like they are in a familiar place when they’re opening up a new app,” he said.  

Even though the app has over 500 downloads so far, Babu said that he does not plan on making revenue from the app and that his only worry financially is paying for the app to sustain itself. 

Babu currently pays out of pocket for the costs of the server the app uses but says that as more people join the app, the cost for the server may become too high. 

“I want to make sure that I can have it sustained without compromising the product, which is kind of our biggest hurdle right now in terms of getting into revenue,” he said. “I’m not really worried about trying to make this into a legitimate business or anything. When I say make money, it’s just to make sure the app can sustain itself.” 

Babu’s venture of developing TicketTime led him down a path to discover his liking for app design, something he is going to continue doing this summer and is considering for a post-graduate career. 

“I’m not limiting myself to app design but like I said before, last year I didn’t even know what it was, it was just like an avenue I wanted to branch out on and see what I can make,” he said. "I’ve really loved app development. It’s really cool seeing people’s feedback and getting to implement things and learning how people use their phones a certain way and making sure that my app plugs into that system very well.”