Date of Defense

4-17-2018

Date of Graduation

4-2018

Department

Computer Science

First Advisor

John Kapenga

Second Advisor

Katie Fox

Abstract

In the spring of 2018 three Computer Science students Benjamin Campbell, James Ward, and Peter Shutt created a mobile application. This app was developed over the span of two semesters for their senior design project; a capstone to their degrees.

Their client, The Lee Honors College at Western Michigan University --referred to as LHC and WMU respectively hereafter-- has a plethora of academic and social information, and a large demand for access to it. This information includes building hours, contact information, health resources, a LHC specific course catalog, social media posts, event descriptions, and much more. The volume of information, combined with its various modes of transportation left the LHC wanting an easier, and maintainable solution to make the information more accessible.

The LHC had wanted to create some assemblage of an app since before the team arrived. This preplanning complimented with student polls to gage interest, assistance from WMU departments and faculty, and regular meetings made the process far more enjoyable and expedient.

In this paper, you will find a more technical report on the project, including an explanation of the pages, how it was developed, and how to maintain it. Simply put, the system that makes this project work can be separated into two distinct parts; the frontend and backend. The frontend, acting as the application downloaded, receives information from the backend and displays it in four main pages. One page is for social media, another for faculty contact information, another for LHC resources, and lastly, one for the LHC specific classes. The backend is a remote server that is connected to via requests from the frontend. The frontend then receives the data from the backend depending on the contents of the request. This is similar to how a browser visits a website.

The system closely resembles a social media app, such as Facebook, but with a distinctly Western spirit. It's available to anyone with an Apple or Android smart device through the Play Store and Apple App Store. It provides quick access in a form that many students are familiar with and enjoy, and has been built with a well documented system. This last part is especially important, since the three original developers will be moving on after graduation. To aid future development of the system, it's essential to have a decipherable foundation to build upon. Hopefully, this paper will help to provide that foundation.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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