Leopold Stuebner SJ Meghan Dougherty, PhD COMM400 December 8, 2014
I Am Loyola.app
I Am Loyola is a native iOS app, written in Apple’s new programming language Swift, that aims to be an interactive guide through the Loyola University Chicago community. It features short profiles about people working at Loyola, especially those staff members that are usually unnoticed. Every profile includes a portrait photo, a quote, a short interview, and a piece of personal information that
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the individual want to share with the community. The app also displays the distance between the user and the person’s office location, making it easy to discover people that are nearby. I Am Loyola is an app that tells stories. Stories of individuals and their contribution to the Loyola community. Stories that are often missed and a commitment that is easily taken for granted. With the I AM Loyola app I strive to give those stories a prominent and beautiful platform. The app is supposed to be a tool, that makes it easy to discover stories and helps with community building and bonding. While Loyola already does a lot for community building through events and programs, it fails to do this with digital means. The official Loyola app features a directory, but it lists only a few members of the community and has the overall charm of a spreadsheet. And since the Loyola app is manly used to access grades, tuition-bills and assignments, it is not something that is necessarily associated with pleasure use and entertaining content.
“Seriously, I’m much more than bills and spreadsheets.” - An Accountant
Therefore it makes sense to have a new specialized app, that joins the other Loyola apps (e.g. “Here For You”, “Loyola Magazine”) in the App stores. In general an app is the ideal storytelling toll for a story that is meant to be consumed on the go, is intended for multiple short times uses, and is supposed to adapt to the physical location of the user. Apple app ecosystem seems to be the best choice for the initial rollout of such a project. The iOS platform is the most popular with college students and features an unrepresented ease of use. Since software distribution and maintenance
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is done through the Apple App Store no efforts on the user or developer side are necessary. Also Apple’s Swift, a new programming language that was launched at the WWDC 2014 in June, enables a new, easier style of mobile development. My app borrows a lot from the typical anatomy of an iOS app. It features the typical UITableView that is well known from other apps (Settings, Mail, Music, etc.) and mimics the swipe-based navigation and it’s the look and feel of the Facebook Paper app. Though the app currently shows only demo content it provides an compelling experience. It’s fun to walk around campus and see the displayed distance changing. The consequent use of familiiar navigation elements and methods makes it easy to navigate and add a playful touch to the user experience. REFERENCES Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines - General guidelines for App Development for Apple’s mobile platform, some of the guidelines are mandatory for a successful submission to the App Store. https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/ MobileHIG/ stackoverflow.com - Peer reviewed forum and support platform. http://www.stackoverflow.com The Swift Programming Language - Swift Programming Language official documentation. h t t p s : / / d e v e l o p e r. a p p l e . c o m / l i b r a r y / m a c / d o c u m e n t a t i o n / S w i f t / C o n c e p t u a l / Swift_Programming_Language/index.html
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