SpottedU : 1.0.1

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Right after launch of SpottedU, the team did not take a break from development, version 1.0.1 was immediately started, filled with design changes, bug fixes, functionality enhancements, and school expansions.

The original design (left) was the initial post container on release, every post was held together, separating the title, body, and buttons into their own section of the container. The updated design (right) was created in order to follow “simplicity”, the container now displays all post aspects together, as well as a timestamp to show when a post was submitted to SpottedU. All elements in the container were also updated visually.

Design and functionality was one of the main focuses for 1.0.1, we wanted to improve the app to be appealing to the eye. By removing shadow and background colour from the post containers, we go for a more minimalist design, not a lot of flashy features, because sometimes “less is more”. On a smaller level of design change, we have dropped the old “Spotted In:” title for posts, we decided that not all students will have a specific place to spot things, therefore we decided that using “Spotted:” would be more suitable to explain or lead into the actual body of the post.

Bugs may be helpful and cherished in nature, but when it comes to app and web development .. We don’t like them so much. Our team made sure to test every aspect of the website; every button was pressed 300 times, every page was visited over and over again, until it satisfied our quality assurance guidelines. Our main goal for update 1.0.1 was to clean the site after the original launch, to rid it of any glitches that may cause downtime. The mobile apps and website were all stress tested to ensure the server wouldn’t crash under any circumstance, this led to multiple changes in the back-end, which in turn boosted overall performance.

SpottedU was initially launched for only uOttawa and CarletonU students in order to have a smaller audience to test the app, however the team immediately began work on the expansion to other schools in the area. The first scheduled expansion will be to Algonquin College, the date for which will be announced in the near future. In October, SpottedU will introduce image attachments to posts, allowing users to visually show their spots. There will be a testing period of 2 or 3 days at Nipissing University, where students there will be able to play around with the images update in order to ensure no issues will occur when the feature goes public to all available schools.

This is our first ever update since launch, we are really excited to keep working on SpottedU to improve its functionality and to bring every student from every campus together; updates will keep happening containing new and innovative features, just keep an eye out, we’ll Spot you soon!

Cheers,

The SpottedU Team,

Connor, Brandon, Alex, Ali, Tom.