USG launches project to develop meal exchange app

The Undergraduate Student Government, Campus Dining and the Office of Information Technology are creating an application that would allow upperclassmen in eating clubs and students on residential college meal plans to exchange meals on their mobile devices.

USG expects to begin the pilot operation this spring and launch the app for use by the fall of 2016, USG president Ella Cheng ’16 said.

While the number of students who will participate in the pilot has not been determined, Cheng said the focus is to include students from all the different eating clubs, rather than having a large number of students.

Plans for the project began last fall, and the developers of the app met last Fridaywith representatives from USG to discuss progress on the app.

Former USG president Shawon Jackson ’15, who was at the meeting, said the meeting gave USG members the chance to voice their opinions.

“We were trying to understand what the next steps would be and ensure that the members on the technology side had all the information necessary,” Executive Director of Dining Services Smitha Haneef said, adding that Campus Dining is frequently working on projects with OIT.

Currently, students in eating clubs have to use slips of paper to exchange meals with students outside of eating clubs. Cheng explained that these meal exchange slips expire at the end of the calendar month, which was hard for students to remember or keep track of.

“It’s very easy for students to lose those cards," Cheng said. “The natural progression was to move it online, or to move it to a mobile app, so that it’s accessible by phone."

The longstanding hosting arrangement between eating club and meal plan students is not only difficult for students to use, but also for Campus Dining to supervise and monitor, Haneef said.

The idea for a mobile meal exchange app is relatively recent, because it was suggested only a few years ago when mobile phones became more widely present on campus, she explained.

“Coming into my role and talking about priorities, this seemed like one of them. We’re working on some options,” Haneef said. “It’s still in a preliminary phase. There is a lot of programming still to be done.”

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The piloting process scheduled to take place later this spring is designed to generate student feedback, Cheng said.

“I think it will have a huge impact,” Cheng said. “With this system, what’s great about it is that you actually have alerts, and you can invite people to confirm exchanges.”

While the app is intended to facilitate meal exchanges between eating club members and non-members, the app might include an option for members of different eating clubs to make switches in the future, Jackson said.

However, the student body appears to have varied responses to the idea of the app.

While Josh Morrison '17 said he thought it was good to have options, Katie Perez '16 said that she did not know how useful the app would be.

"We already have two swipes a week, and I don’t use any of mine,” Perez said. “I feel like it would be really advantageous for underclassmen to visit eating clubs even if they didn’t have affiliations, but for an upperclassman in an eating clubs, I don’t know how much they’d use it, except if it was for late meal.”

“It’s kind of inconsistent in my case. There are some weeks when I go [to dining halls] more, and other weeks I don’t go at all,” Dinara Gabdrakhmanova ’16 said.

Campus Dining and OIT have heard from students who want to use a meal exchange app, Haneef said.

“There has been student feedback, and OIT is trying to incorporate most of those, as much as they are able to,” Haneef said, “For campus dining, the vision is ensuring that, when there is a request from students, trying to at least listen to it, understand it and come up with solutions that meet their needs.”

OIT Lead Developer George Fleming and Dave Herrington of OIT declined to comment.

Jaysen LeSage, senior application developer at University Services, and Joshua Thomas, associate director of information technology at University Services, did not respond to a request for comment.