Being a professional software engineer myself i have to agree with timsamoff.
When creating applications that will be used by many users you usually start with a general list of desired features and then you start creating a user interface to see if you actually can add all those features in a way that makes sense. Only then you start actually coding stuff.

Please keep in mind that the guys are students researching interface design and usability, not software architecture, so of course their focus is on the GUI and not on the code behind it.

So instead of asking for code (or even scolding them for not providing a finished software) have a look at their stuff and see if you can be of any help finding usability problems.