By Lauryn Longacre, Contributing Writer
The new SU Mobile app, launched on Aug. 13 and created by professor John Foltz offers Susquehanna students and faculty a more accessible way to navigate the school’s student and faculty services.
Foltz said his reason for creating the new app was to better benefit the student body.
“We were looking at different ways to make improvements in touchpoints with students so that every interaction they had with the university was easier,” he said.
SU Mobile was not Susquehanna’s first mobile app. The first app created for Susquehanna was made in 2007 but was deleted due to its lack of usefulness, according to Foltz.
Susquehanna also has the SU Now app, which displays events around campus, but was limited to just that service.
“What we decided to do was [find] an available company that sells a framework [for the app’s base] and then [build] our app over top of that so the new could answer all types of questions for students when they get onto campuses,” Foltz continued.
He explained that the SU Mobile app offers a wider range of access than previous Susquehanna apps. SU Mobile can go to the SU Now app, load webpages, go to blackboard and MySU.
Foltz compared the app to a central repository of “all the cool things you need to do, right in your hand.”
Susquehanna first-year Bobbi Beachy said that the app made it easy to find information and that everything on the app was self-explanatory. She said that the app offers better accessibility than sites such as MySU.
“It’s really easy to get to your schedule,” Beachy said when asked what her favorite part of the app was.
The process of developing the SU Mobile app was inspired by other university apps such as the University of Houston.
According to Foltz, the team looked at the other app layouts and merged the best ideas from each app to create SU Mobile. Using the web prototyping site Figma, Foltz created a prototype of the app to develop its layout and set up its many uses.
Once the prototype was finished, Foltz took it to the Susquehanna executives to get approval for the purchase of the software package to create the running app. With the help of the registrar, residence life, counseling center, university communications and information technology the SU Mobile app was launched in less than four weeks.
“Usually this stuff takes a year, we did it in three-and-a-half weeks,” Foltz said.
“The biggest problem that we faced was that we had to learn the structure of the way the app was built,” he continued.
Foltz said that the team had to work with a whole new type of computer language than they had worked with before, despite the software company’s training modules. As for the future of the app, Foltz plans on allowing SU Mobile to evolve as the year progresses, creating a module for special events such as homecoming and breakthrough.
“Eventually, much of what you do on MySU you’ll be able to do on the app, so you might be able to do things like registering, [student workers could] enter their time sheets,” Foltz said.
“Faculty and staff members might be able to go in and see the things they needed to do on their records.”
The app has received over 1,000 users on the site since its release to the app store. The app receives around 700 visitors on its best days, which is more than 50 percent of what MySU receives.
“My feeling is that most of those users are first year students, because I don’t think the upper-classmen are up to speed on it yet, because we haven’t rolled it out it very effectively with them, which will come,” Foltz said.
“If we can retain three, or five or six students by having the app be a part of it, well that’s a really good investment then.”
The app can be downloaded it on the App Store or Google Play Store.