inUGA

Discover Your Ideal College Experience

How much time did you spend in college as a new student trying to figure out where you belong? Don’t you wish you had a roadmap to guide you through those first few months? inUGA is an app designed to give students a personalized tour of their campus that introduces them to places, clubs and local events that will best fit their interests. Our app will help students turn their new school into their new home in no time.

Here are the basics:

inUGA is an app that allows new students to interact with their campus in a fun narrative format that is relatable to their real college experience.

• The student goes through a storyline on UGA’s campus that highlights the major buildings and landmarks that most students visit.
• Throughout the narrative, the student is asked questions, presented with items and has conversations with virtual students, allowing them to create their own personalized experience.

• Based on the student’s decisions within the narrative, the app collects data about the student’s interests and personality.
• At the end of the narrative, the app uses this information to present the student with a list of places, events and activities in Athens that will best fit their interests.

Why?

Being in a new place can be scary. If you can think back to your own college experience, you will remember this. If not, let’s consider Martha’s experience. Martha is from Wisconsin, she likes music and nature, and she wanted a change of scenery after high school so she applied to UGA. But when she got to campus, not knowing the school, the town, or anyone, she was terrified. She didn’t know any of the school’s traditions and she was too scared to ask anyone about the music scene or the best outdoor trails. Then Martha used inUGA, and she learned that the Foundry has underrated cheap concerts and that the Athens Botanical Gardens has beautiful hikes. She made great friends through her interests, and by the end of her first semester, Martha had her routine down. With inUGA, Martha made UGA her new home.

How?

inUGA uses interactive narrative technology to take the user on different paths based on their choices. Within the program, there are over 10,000 unique tour routes that are determined by the users’ choices along the way. In order to give the most accurate suggestions to each user at the end of the tour, we have identified five general personality traits: artistic, athletic, adventurous, social, and studious. Every decision the user makes, such as what places on campus to visit and how they respond in conversations, assigns them a point for one of the personality traits.

We classified our suggestions into three tiers: very interested, semi-interested and not interested. At the end of the tour, if a personality trait has more than two points, the user is classified as very interested in that trait and is presented with a full list of relevant suggestions. Exactly two points means the user is semi-interested and receives a shorter list. Under two points, and the user is not interested and will receive no suggestions relevant to that trait.

We created inUGA using ASAPS (Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System) Advanced Stories Builder program. It was developed by Hartmut Koenitz and allows for a personalized experience for every user. We hope that our app will help students forge their own unique path at UGA.

Meet the inUGA Team

Beth Anne Watts, our producer, is a senior Mass Media Arts major who is interested in pursuing a career in live television production or music business.

Patrick Grant, the technical lead, is a senior Mass Media Arts major interested in Web Development, Video Production, and Social Media. He hopes to be in charge of a company’s digital media efforts.

Elizabeth Dickerson, our content manager, is a junior Public Relations major interested in good food, good comedy and good people. She hopes to work in new business development or account management for an advertising firm one day.

Andrew Lee, the graphic designer, is a senior majoring in Mass Media Arts. He is focusing on video production, specifically post production, so he hopes to find a job in the movie industry.