UPC multiplatform app

Intuitive and full of content, UPC has finally arrived to the mobile world.

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Inspiration

We are a group of Computer Science Engineering students who, driven by a challenge that IThinkUPC proposed during the Hackaton of the UPC 2018, we embarked on this fascinating project. We belive that UPC, a worldwide known university deserves a place in the internet and in our phones, and that all the students and people who work there equally deserve an easy-to-use mobile app to make their UPC life more enjoyable.

What it does

We packed lots of functionalities into our app, which an be used in both: ANDROID and IOS devices. First of all, when you open it, you can choose which campus you are interested in, and then, the app will display a menu so you can choose what information do you want to access:

Location This function will show you in google maps where is your campus, so you don't get lost and know exactly where is it and how to get there.

Courses This function displays all the courses aviable at the UPC at the moment, which are a lot. It will help people know what can they study and what is UPC offering at the moment.

Transport This function is for those who arrive from other places. It shows step by step how can you arrive to your campus from either the Prat Airport, Sants Estació, Plaça Catalunya or the Port de Barcelona. You can access this function even without internet.

Photos A slideshow of photos of the different campuses of the University.

News This function lets you read all the latest news from the UPC so you don't miss anything new or important.

Libraries Function that displays a list with all the information you need to know about every UPC library: timetables, contact number, social media and location.

Social Media This screen displays all social media that UPC uses, so any user can follow them or see what is the university publishing.

Restaurants A function to see all the nearest restaurants to the campus. It also shows if they are open or not, their yelp rating and the user has the option to phone them to book a table.

Calendar Screen that displays the UPC calendar, with all the holidays, and off days.

Map Our app also has a campus map so that anyone can navigate easily in the campus and find everything quickly.

Notification system We also have a notification system so that UPC admins can send push notifications to all the app users. We find this functionality very important and a potent comunication tool, because it's a direct method to contact the students if anything important happens (for example if some lectures are cancelled due to bad weather).

Landing page We have also built the a landing Page website to promote and educate people about how our app works.

How we built it

The app is fully built in react-native, so it can be used in ANDROID and IOS devices. We used different libraries, and APIs to help us implement some of the functions listed above. For example, we used the YELP API to implement the restaurant functionality, and FIREBASE and ONESIGNAL to implement the notification system. We divided the different functionalities we wanted our app to have and each one of us had to implement at least one. As a team, we helped each other if someone found difficulties while developing his part.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into multiple challenges, because some of our team members weren't fully familiarized with react-native and mobile app development, but despite this, we learned a lot and, in the end, we were capable of fully developing the app we had designed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have developed an app we find complete for a Univesity we find excellent.

What we learned

We learned a lot about multiple things: React, JavaScript, mobile app development, debugging, working with a team...

What's next for UPC Mobile

We would like to launch the app so anyone who needs it could download it an use it.

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