The Department of Public Safety and the School of Information Studies have come together to create an Android app to help students contact and get alerts from DPS.

The app was most recently updated on Nov. 13, and has had 10-50 installations, according to the information on the Google Play store. Features include access to DPS’s notifications and alerts, DPS’s automatically updated crime map with mobile GPS and buttons to easily access DPS’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

Yun Huang, an associate professor of research at the iSchool, said DPS contacted her at the end of the summer and asked her to develop the app. Huang said she worked with two graduate students on the project, one of whom developed the public app on the Android market while the other developed the administrative control panel for DPS to use.  She added that she and her students met with DPS several times to discuss the students’ needs with public safety.

Huang, who had previous experience creating apps, said she reached out to DPS about creating a mobile app when she arrived on campus in August in 2012.

She said the DPS app was developed to help students reach DPS much more easily.

“As a researcher, I’m interested in the different features of this app so students can have a better channel to contact DPS, and then to get information more timely,” she said.

Hannah Warren, DPS’s information and internal communications officer, said the concept was to bring all of the department’s information sources into one central location on a platform many students would use. She added that she hopes students use the app to give DPS feedback on how the app works and how both DPS and the app can improve.

The app will also have an administrative panel as a security feature to prevent any malicious virus attacks, Warren said.

“We wanted to have the foresight behind the security, so that if someone could potentially hack this application and send out a whole bunch of messages at one time, we wanted to have the threshold to say, ‘Nope, sorry, you’re shut down,’” she said.

She said the next goal for the DPS app is to come to the iOS store for students with iPhones. Warren added that there is no estimated release date for the iOS version.

Huang, the professor behind developing the app, said the team decided to release the Android app first because it was much easier to release on time, since Apple charges a fee for all developers to release an app on its market. She added that the team is hoping to receive aid from the iSchool to develop an iOS app.

J.D. Ross, the iSchool’s director of communications, said the iSchool supported the team with resources during its development for the Android app, and said that it’s possible the school could also help develop the iOS version.

He added that he felt the app helps raise awareness of safety issues on campus, which will ultimately help out the university.

“I think it’s a good idea. Students are on these things all the time. You can’t walk across campus without seeing folks looking at their phone,” he said. “If it’s an easier way for the Department of Public Safety to provide a service to their campus constituencies, then I’m all for it. If we can provide that through the skills and the faculty members that we have here, then I think it’s a good thing.”

Published on December 4, 2013 at 1:22 am

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