It may be impossible to attend every campus event during the semester, but some students find it hard to even stay in the know.
“It can be really hard keeping track of all the events that are going on across campus,” said Lawrence Parawan, a University of Memphis junior pre-med major.
Uin, a new smart phone application designed by University senior and political science major Cole Roe, wants to change that. Built to better connect students to on campus activities, the app allows U of M organizations to post event details to an online bulletin board. Users can then sift through the schedule to see what they’d like to attend.
“Uin is an app that was created by students, for students,” said international business major Jonathan Seagraves, a U of M sophomore and marketer for the app.
Seagraves became involved when Roe came to speak to his honors forum, looking for ideas.
“He was looking for something that would better the campus, and no one in class could keep up with all the events,” Seagraves said.
When Roe heard this, he merged with members of a capstone project to build the app. Together, they worked to construct Uin, but it wasn’t easy.
“Software development is terrifyingly stressful and a huge challenge,” Roe said.
Despite the difficulties, the group prevailed, and the app was released to positive feedback.
“Response to Uin has been absolutely fantastic,” Roe said. “Students love that we’ve built a platform so they can easily keep up with events that are going on around them on campus.”
More than 2000 events have been posted to the app, according to Roe. That’s just the beginning, as he intends to release an overhaul this fall. Uin version 2 will be released around the start of the semester, and will include student-only access, verified organization accounts, public and private events, 21 new tags (which allows anyone to filter the event feed by different criteria), unique calendars and the ability to join an event, meaning users can see who is attending.
Organizations will also be able to see who attended their events. That’s not all. Roe hinted at “a few more surprise features” for students to discover.
The construction and design of Uin may seem like a daunting task, but Roe’s not working alone. Building alongside Roe are U of M sophomore Kareem Dasilva and recent graduate Ismael Alonso, both of whom are computer science majors.
The creators are also interested in reaching out to students. Anyone interested in joining the Uin team can contact Roe at hello@areuin.com
“We are actively looking to grow the team with actual students. We are open to chat with anyone in the campus community,” Roe said.
