Kiley Wellendorf | News Co-Editor

Senior Alex Gleaves, senior Tyler Lafferty, and 2014 Buena Vista University (BVU) graduate Matthew Wunschel are the creators of a BVU mobile app available for iPads, iPhones and Androids. The “BVUInfo” app is a free downloadable app that enables students to connect better to the university on the go.

“It’s an everyday information app for Buena Vista, directed for students mainly that has news, athletics, aces, menu, laundry, and soon to come KBVU as well,” Lafferty said.

While the initial project didn’t start until this past spring semester in Dr. Jason Shepherd’s, “Software Engineering” class, both Gleaves and Lafferty had previously began plotting this project out. According to Shepherd, Gleaves and Lafferty first came up with the idea in his “iPad and iPhone Programming” class during the fall semester of 2013. This beginning idea quickly morphed into a multi-device application that pushed group members to keep making changes throughout the semester.

“Building an iPad app is not a trivial thing, and deploying an app to the Apple Store can be rather daunting,” Shepherd said.

“We were kind of stuck with the situation of: obviously we wanted to program it for both iPhones and Androids, because we know that a lot of students have both kinds of phones. We also toyed with the idea of Windows phones but we didn’t feel that it was a big enough area to cover with the time that we had allotted. Obviously when you have those two choices, they’re programed differently; it’s actually very difficult make an IOS App and then translate it over to Android, and it was a little bit easier to try to make the android app and then bring that over to iOS,” Gleaves said.

During the preliminary stages of their development, the trio posted weekly blog entries updating Shepherd on how well their process was going. While their project ran smoothly later in the process, Gleaves describes a bumpy start at the beginning.

“This was the first time I worked with a team of three…[it] is a lot different than working with a pair because having to find the time for three people to work together is nearly impossible,” Gleaves said.

When a group member was unable to meet up to work on the project, they were held accountable for communicating with the other group members about how their individual process was going. This individual process even continued once the semester was over; Lafferty embarked on an internship this past summer working with “Catchfire Media” in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was able to work with iOS programming.

“I did most of it, and kind of was able to release test-versions to Alex, so he could say, ‘Yeah, it looks good,’ or, ‘Yeah, we should change that,’” Lafferty said.

After finalizing the project, the School of Science paid for the licenses they had to obtain in order to put an application on the App Store and Google Play. Once finalized, the app was placed on the store and has since encountered changes with both the Android and iOS app.

“We’ve had some interesting feedback on the Android one, which is why we’re working on fixing it, but the iOS version, I mean, I’ve only heard good things about it. They’ve come to me and asked to add KBVU which is coming shortly, but there’s only been good stuff from the iOS perspective of it. People tend to really like it, because it’s been really word-of-mouth right now, we’re at right around 125 downloads already,” Lafferty said.

Both Gleaves and Lafferty want to hear from students about any changes or suggestions they’d like to have added to the BVUInfo app. Although this application is currently on the App Store, the application will only continue to expand and grow as time goes on.

“Alex and Tyler have shown a considerable amount of personal initiative in taking this project from start to completion on multiple platforms. This is a project that will be beneficial to all BVU students, and it is also a project that Alex and Tyler can add to their personal portfolios as they apply for full-time post-graduation positions. The ability to build mobile apps is in high demand right now,” Shepherd said.

Both Lafferty and Gleaves plan to make a career out of Computer Science once they graduate.

Photo by Justice Gage