Grinnell AppDev

#community, #leadership, #education, #tangibleLearning, #peerMentorship

In 2012 I co-founded Grinnell AppDev and lead it until I graduated in 2015. 

The goals

1. Build a multi-disciplinary community of students with a passion for creating mobile apps to benefit those at Grinnell and beyond.
   
   
2. Create an education program based on peer-to-peer mentiorship and hands-on learning to teach students the essential skills they need to apply their academic knowledge to create tangible product.
   

Key Accomplishments

1. We designed and developed 6 applications for iOS and Android.
   
2. I grew the team from 3 to 33 members and recruited a diverse community of students because I believe in the value of everyone’s opinion—regardless of their gender, race or religion.
   
3. I helped secure $150,000 in funding and expanded our single developer role into design, research, marketing and finance—all the necessary functions to grow a thriving organization.
   
4. I created and iterated on the curriculum for iOS development and design.
   
5. I helped several students land their dream internships by preparing them for interviews and editing their resumes.
   
6. I created one of the largest and most impactful student-led organizations on campus.

In the beginning, it was just one iOS application. But, it soon became clear that G-Licious was the start of something bigger that the college and its students desperately needed—a community that supports learning and creativity outside of the classroom.

But we needed a little help...

We quickly realized that to achieve what we set out to do, we needed financial support—student wages, test devices, servers and educational materials cost a lot of money.

Luckily for us, the college launched the President’s Innovation Fund in 2013 to support promising ideas proposed by students, staff or faculty and we decided to apply.

By the end of the year we received $150,000 to run the pilot project for three years, before the college decides whether to institutionalize it or now (now, in 2019, it is instituitionalized!).

2013

Scarlet & Black and KDIC


Launched 2 more apps by partnering with the school newspaper - Scarlet & Black, and the school radio station - KDIC and established the official GitHub account

I designed both the apps for iOS and helped develop Scarlet & Black. Remember this was 2013 (:

Taining programs 1.0

I developed the initial structure for iOS and Android programs:

1. Programming fundamentals (Objective-C or Java)
   
2. Explore the IDE and build your first app by using the interface builder (Xcode or Eclipse)
   
3. Source control through git and GitHub
   
4. Understand the difference between frontend and backend by using Parse
5. Advanced programming for iOS or Android applications
   

Each module had accompanying readings, videos, and challenges. 

Created the AppDev brand: “Build Together”

2014

Grinnell Events


Lists all the campus events and lets you add them to your calendar. It even lets you know if you have a conflict at the time. I designed and helped develop Grinnell Events.

Grinnell DB


A mobile app for Grinnell College's Campus Directory, DB. Affectionately dubbed Stalker DB. Rumor has it its usage spikes significantly every Sunday.

G-licious Redesign


To stay on top of Apple’s design guidelines, we refreshed the look and feel of our flagship app. I took care of the redesign.

Facetag


A mobile app for playing Murder with a twist! Take a clear picture of your target’s face to decrease their HP. 

Taining programs 2.0

Introduced collaborative assignments and weekly mentor sessions.

Started developing a design curriculum.

2015

Scarlet & Black 2.0


Redesigned Scarlet & Black focusing on usability. We developed some lo-fi prototypes and conducted several in-person tests through InVision.
I even conducted a thorough heuristic analysis of the app for our HCI class.

#GrinWell


Encourage students to better manage their demanding schedules by having a healthy and balanced lifestyle through exercise, sleep, nutrition and mindfulness.

The app was created in support of a college-wide #grinwell challenge. Each day President Kington posted his stats, and the college donated money to a local charity for every student who beat him.

Grinnell Alumni DB

Connect Grinnell Alumni across the world, we decided to pitch an app to the administration for an Alumni Database. Read the full proposal here or check out the UX mocks here.

Taining programs 3.0

Launched design curriculum, and encourage cross-team collaboration. Introduced a “graduation” cap-stone project.

The trainees could choose to develop or design a small feature on one of our existing apps, or collaborate with each other to build their own small app. 

Next steps

When I graduated, I left Grinnell AppDev in strong and capable hands. They’ve kept AppDev going, and made it even better!

I’m happy and proud to have had the chance to realize our idea, work with a mountain of amazing people along the way, and to have left a positive impact at Grinnell College.


All the 64 folks that have come and gone through Grinnell AppDev from 2012 to 2017.

Personal takeaways

I’m passionate about building products that improve people’s lives

I especially love the initial phases—when you notice a problem and have an idea how to solve it!

When you have to figure out who you’re building this for and why and build so many prototypes you can barely keep track.

That’s my favorite part and a clear clue that I wanted to pursue HCI further.

I loved teaching—and learning

Starting Grinnell AppDev convinced me that I wanted to declare Computer Science as a major. Hooking up my first button to an action was absolutely magical.

Through AppDev I had the opportunity to share what I learned with others and challenged myself to keep learning as well.

I have an insatiable curiosity about the workings of the world and the people that live in it and I can’t think of anything more rewarding than sharing that with others.

Resources

Grinnell AppDev
AppDev GitHub
AppDev Facebook
AppDev Twitter
Innovation Fund Winners Trustee Presentation
Global Students - Mobile Apps
Grinwell Challenge Begins, App Launched
Mobile Directory App Now Operational
Team that Brought you G-Licious is Develloping New Apps