Created by: Russell Abraham, Michael Cummins, Devin Franchino, Tyler Houser, Jaheim Oates
We will create an app to replace the need for organizations on campus to use the Outlook email app to reach the students of Ursinus College. The app will function as a general newsboard for the campus, allowing organizations to send notifications to the Ursinus Community about events or activities. Users will be able to filter their feed from the general campus community to organizations they are interested in or are a part of. This app will allow for better real-time notifications of students for time pressing events, to ensure that the students do not miss any opportunities on campus. The app can be treated as a local, controlled newsboard with customization options for students as well as giving student engagement and other similar organizations the ability to reliably contact every student on campus.
It is a very common complaint of students at Ursinus that their email, being their main form of academic communication with professors and peers, is constantly flooded with emails from student engagement and other campus-located clubs. Creating an app that still allows for these organizations to contact students freely while also separating the academic correspondence from the community and activity correspondence would remove the negative stigma on campus associated with campus wide communication. Furthermore, the application can allow for students to select certain clubs or organizations whose messages are more important to them, and become a pseudo “follower” of that organization, allowing for further student-oriented filtration of the messages they receive.
Our stakeholder groups include the office of student engagement and presidents, organizers, and members of student clubs, societies, and activities as the population of users who would be sending or posting messages on the app. We will rely on their feedback to determine exactly how much freedom they will require in their posts, as well as how much interaction they would like between the senders and receivers. The general student body and Ursinus Community would be the stakeholder group for the population of users who receive the messages and can filter their feed for a personalized experience. We will rely upon their feedback to determine the most appealing UI as well as how to best handle the filtering of clubs and/or notifications for the best use case for the receivers.
A basic newsboard app that can notify students of events on campus, and allows students to filter their feeds to better match their interests. There will be a clear distinction between the senders and receivers of the messages and posts, and we want to give senders freedom in both what they post and what appears in the notification to the receivers. The receivers will have freedom in which clubs they choose to follow in order to be able to filter their news feed in a separate tab.
Users can directly message other users within the same groups as them (i.e. clubs, classes, organizations) and can comment on posts. This would require filters for obscene language and bullying/hateful remarks. Another potential route for the project would be to have access to students schedules and automatically create groups for each class they are a part of; the students would then have means to contact their professors and other students within their class, adding academic assistance to the app’s functionalities. Professors would then be able to use the app as a way of sending messages directly to the students in a more reliable manner than outlook, functioning similarly to how the CS department at Ursinus uses Discord.
This app’s merit lies primarily in the combination of multiple successful concepts in order to solve a common problem in the Ursinus community. The app will not only declutter the emails of Ursinus students, but will also function as a customizable, controlled newsboard featuring only meaningful, informative posts. This takes the customizable, user-centered aspects of social media apps and solves their problem of unregulated misinformation and clutter by controlling who can be designated as a poster or user. This app will allow for much better organization and communication between administration, student engagement, and the general student population at Ursinus, creating a better campus community.
A localized, controlled, digital newsboard with designated senders and receivers could prove to be extremely useful for communities outside of Ursinus College. Other colleges and universities, as well as all levels of education, could definitely find use for an application of a similar manner. Furthermore, organizations, local communities, and even the generalized population could find extreme value in a ‘social media’ style app that only provides controlled, filtered information and notifications.
Are you tired of a cluttered, unorganized email inbox? Do you ever miss fun or important campus activities because their flyers were hidden in your Outlook? Are you looking for an easier way to stay up to date with the clubs and campus activities that matter to you?
Question: Can students post on the app?
Answer: No, only organizations and clubs approved by the administrators of the app are allowed to post.
Question: Will the app just become cluttered with all the clubs just like my email?
Answer: No, there will be a general campus feed with all the clubs, but you will also be able to filter and
cultivate a ‘following’ tab filled with only the clubs and organizations that matter to you.
Question: How much freedom will the posters have?
Answer: Posts can include text, images, or videos and posters will also have the functionality of determining
whether or not they want to post to the whole campus or only their followers, as well as deciding what the notification will look like for the users.
Question: Will users be able to chat with other users?
Answer: The end goal is that users will be able to chat with other users within the same ‘following’ umbrella, which
could be useful for classes or clubs, and also have the capability of commenting on posts. Students will be able to directly message their teachers,
making communication much easier.