Inspiration
Going to classes the first semester of my freshman year at OSU, I realized how much of a wide range in quality each room was. One class would be in a room that was new, modern and nice and then my next class would be in a poorly lit, wooden chairs, hard to see projector screen lecture hall. I also have had fun using apps such as letterboxd and beli. I wanted to learn how to make an app like them and something that related to the school that others would want to use/try.
What it does
OSU Rooms is an app/website that lets users rate classrooms, lecture halls, labs based on their overall experience in them. It also allows users to upload their own photos for rooms and if using a osu email account, add comments to rooms. It has many customizable options and includes tabs for different things such as links to resources for students.
How we built it
I built this using expo and it took me many hours of pain and suffering. For some parts I had to ask AI for help to understand how to do things when the documents were not understandable.
Challenges we ran into
As it was my first expo project I've ever created and haven't ever worked with any outside databases and firebase, I had challenge with almost everything I tried to do. At first I by hand hardcoded every room into the app but eventually had to figure out a way to host it all in firebase to make changes efficient and not require updates. Because I used native tabs instead of creating my own system, I also had trouble with how different systems did their native tabs (no customization on android colors and web putting it at top instead of bottom). The most annoying thing was the pain of changing something to fix an issue on one operating system and seeing that the fix messed up the app on another operating system.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud of the whole app and how it actually works. There is a lot of optimization and additions that still needs to be done but for the state in which it is now, it is amazing. I'm also really proud of how firebase is able to hold all of the information for rooms and images making the app size not so large.
What we learned
I learned a lot about using firebase to store data and images I also learned a lot about how to make an app using expo that can be used on many operating systems at once with only one code. It is really hard to make a full fledged out app in a limited time even if it was 2 months. Next time I will make sure to work with others to make my work load less.
What's next for OSU Rooms
I hope to be able to release it on mobile app stores soon once I get the 12 required beta testers for android and dev account for ios. I also have plans for adding more features such as Building Blueprints/Maps to show locations of rooms (on room page), Food support (show each place in dining halls with hours and menu in app), In app support/suggestions (Discord for now), Club listing (searchable list of OSU clubs w/ meeting locations, websites, etc). The biggest focus now is to get the word out about the app and get people to use it.
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