Georgia Southern students create “campus guide” app
Two Georgia Southern University students have created a new mobile application for android and apple operating systems. The app is designed to help students navigate their way around campus and find classes.
Junior business major, Jordan Steen (pictured left) and junior computer science major, Jim Ashachik are the two creators of the campus guide app. Intended to help students find any location on campus, the app includes lists of buildings on campus and a virtual map of campus as well.
The two friends originally met through their fraternity Delta Sigma Phi two years ago. “We have always been really good friends,” said Steen. “It just so happens we were sitting around one day bouncing ideas off each other and thought of the app.”
Ashachik, the brains behind the app coding, first started creating apps after getting his first smart phone two years ago. “I started messing around with the idea,” said Ashachik. “Then I found out that Georgia Southern offered a class for programming for android phones.” Ashachik decided to take the class and began creating more and more basic apps. He began to see how they worked and entered different competitions. To his surprise he ended up winning.
The first contest Ashachik (pictured right) entered was an android programming contest. Along with another friend from Georgia Southern, Ashachik created a basic version of a class finder app. He took home 3rd place based more on his idea rather than design. A few months later Steen and Ashachik began discussing the competition and the possibilities the app held. “It originally was a very basic idea,” said Steen. “Then I mentioned the idea of a virtual tour. We took the idea to why don’t we make it a class finder/anything finder?”
Ashachik already had a basic idea of how the app would work based on his previous experience in the android competition. Over Christmas break, the two friends collaborated to improve the app.
The app should be ready for use within the next month or so, said Steen. Ashachik is still in the process of adding more locations and customizing it. Steen and Ashachik hope to one day have the app reach every university in the U.S. “What we’re going to do is customize it to each university,” said Steen. “We are going to take the same app, go to UGA and change the coding. Any university that wants a class finder app we will work with.”
Besides creating this app, Steen is working to launch Pro Applications, a company that develops mobile applications for other companies. The campus guide app will be the company’s first, but the two have all kinds of ideas for the future. “The main thing we are trying to push first is the campus guide app,” said Steen. “Once we get that out we will work on some other things.”
In the next couple of years, the two businessmen see themselves providing their app to 20 universities. “From there, hopefully the growth will take off by itself,” said Steen. “We want it to be on every university because that just means more potential for us and for our company.”
Posted in Events