Stutilities

Inspiration

Staying organized has always been a major challenge for the students at our community high school. Students across all grade levels consistently lose essential school materials like calculators, school laptops, notebooks, and binders. Since the entire lost and found system at our school is essentially a large cardboard box placed at the entrance, finding a lost item in the huge pile of school materials is nearly impossible. Lost school materials that are paramount to the academic success of students sit in the lost and found box unclaimed until they are donated at the end of each semester.

What it does

The traditional lost and found system across most high schools involves lost items being placed in huge piles, which makes reclamation difficult. Stutilities solves the problem of inefficient lost and found systems at schools through its digital social-media-styled lost and found system. Students can input lost items and the whereabouts of the item in the interface. Our app also has several other features that help students stay organized, including a comprehensive agenda feature, digital volunteer log, and GPA calculator to help students streamline information about their busy schedules.

How we built it

We built Stutilities using AppSheets, a platform that allows its users to create apps from data sources, such as Google Sheets, Excel, Cloud SQL, etc. We started with the main issue we wanted to address, the Lost and Found issue at our school. We created a user portal for Lost and Found items, a simple interface that can be easily accessed by the users. After creating the Lost and Found portion of our app, we expanded to creating different additional features such as the Volunteer Hour Log, Agenda, and GPA Calculator. These additional features are supplementary to the Lost and Found, and they help students deal with other forms of organizational issues. To complete the app, we added a Home Page and a Help Page to assist users to navigate through the app smoothly.

Challenges we ran into

Throughout the different phases of our project such as planning, development, and execution, we faced numerous obstacles. At first, we were puzzled about how to create an application through the Google Platform, Appsheets, but we were able to familiarize ourselves through watching tutorials on our own time as well as collaborating on what we learned, so the team benefited from the experience as a whole. To ensure that the user’s experience is private to themselves we learned to apply security filters, we utilized our framework’s features to create secure experiences by storing information privately that can be accessed only by the user. This was very important to us because all information inputted was accessible to all users. Lastly, storing the user’s input in the backend and converting this information into a coherent and aesthetic look was a challenge that required more attention because formatting raw data into the app proved difficult. No matter what obstacles came throughout our path, we leaped our way to success.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We achieved several milestones that may seem small, but to us, these breakthroughs were immeasurable during the app development. The Agenda feature was a huge accomplishment as it was the first time we attempted the feature, it didn’t function as planned and would bug out. Eventually, we were able to solve this issue and it felt like we had broken through the ice with new knowledge. Another accomplishment we are proud of is organizing data for the users. Before, all the data that the users would input was visible to all users, including data that was not theirs. We incorporated security filters into Stutilities allowing the user to only see and work with their own data. Going into the project with no knowledge of building an app, we didn’t have a lot of confidence in ourselves. But we persevered in learning AppSheets, implemented the features, and created Stutilities.

What we learned

We developed proficiency in building applications using AppSheets. Furthermore, we also learned about databases and implemented them using Google Sheets. A soft skill we cultivated during the production of our app was the ability to successfully delegate work amongst our group and stay on schedule allowing our app to be completed on time.

What's next for Stutilities

Our next step is to make Stutilities accessible to not only our Local High School but to other Middle and High Schools as well. We’ve communicated with our school admin and have set meetings in mid-April to spread the use of this application to students to implement the app in their daily lives. Once the app is approved by the school board, we plan on pushing this platform to other schools as its features are universal. We hope for this application to help students become more organized and achieve their fullest potential.