Downtown students with smart phones will soon have a new tool to help them navigate around campus and downtown Phoenix.
A mobile application for urban Sun Devils is in the earliest stages of discussion. The application will be developed by the Walter Cronkite School’s New Media Innovation Lab and is intended to help students reap the benefits of living downtown, said Christopher Callahan, vice provost of the Downtown campus and dean of the Cronkite School.
“We are working on a fun app that we hope will build community and student engagement on the Downtown campus,” said Liz Smith, outreach director for the Cronkite School. “It will help students connect with all that’s going on as well as with their peers.”
There are places within walking distance of the university, including art galleries, affordable restaurants and a growing independent music scene. Students are unaware of the advantages they have being downtown, Callahan said.
Charles Woodall-Pike, a smart phone owner and journalism senior, said downtown Phoenix isn’t geared toward the typical college student.
“It’s not like Tempe where it’s a huge campus and you get student discounts at local stores and things like that,” he said. “I can totally understand the logic behind (the app). You’ve got to do something if you want to keep students here.”
However, the specifics of the application and how it will help students stay connected to both each other and the urban environment have not been decided. The future mobile application has not been named yet.
There is no scheduled release for the new mobile application being developed by the Innovation Lab, but updated information will be available in the coming weeks.
“We have not quite decided what we are going to do. We are still hashing it out,” said Retha Hill, director of the Innovation Lab.
The lab’s last app, SmartPHX, was completed in less than five months and was released earlier this year. It allows users to quickly navigate nearby restaurants, clubs, entertainment venues and cultural events in the downtown Phoenix area using GPS technology.
The Innovation Lab will have a tough mark to hit with this latest application. The SmartPHX app has held a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating from users in the Android market since its release, said Mark Ng, the lead web developer and programmer of the SmartPHX app.
The new mobile application will possibly use some of the same technology as the SmartPHX app, Ng added.
“It may take a bit longer to develop, depending on the time frame and what we have to work with,” Ng said. “We want to make sure people are happy with the product. It’s hard to say exactly what it will do because we might have to adapt or change things to make that happen.”
Contact the reporter at rwnoel@asu.edu
