The APP Lab
Last month, I got the opportunity to learn about the Drexel App Lab. I got the opportunity to speak to Dr. Brandon Morton, who works at the App Lab and oversees it.
The App Lab is a collaboration of the Pennoni Honors College with Bentley Systems. It is in the ExCITe Center. It is a place where students from across the university who are interested in mobile app development, no matter what is their major, can come and develop apps. One doesn’t have to be advanced in programming to work in the App Lab- novices to advanced developers are welcome to pitch in and work on their ideas.
Dr. Morton told me that the App Lab was mainly created because there were many students who were interested in mobile app development. But the courses that Drexel offered had a lot of prerequisite courses which was difficult for students of diverse majors to fit in their schedules. The App Lab was then created so that these students can pursue their interests.
The goal of the App Lab is to create a pathway for students and to foster, support and grow the community of app development. They are also trying to improve student involvement in app development by hosting events such as Appy Hour, a networking session where people talk about the apps they have developed. They have also hosted workshops on Intro to swift programming, to help students learn programming from the basics.
The App Lab works on various innovative projects. The students in the App Lab are currently working on designing a Slackbot, which is a business tool. It works with the app, Slack. It acts as a part-time programmer and a full time personal assistant. It helps one get answers to their questions about Slack. The App Lab is creating a website that will help students find sublet apartments. Currently the websites that exist, present their information in a very haphazard format. This new website on which the App Lab is working on, will present information in an organized and user friendly format. Some students are creating an app that will help students and Drexel find food trucks around them. Th App Lab is working on a very innovative project that is connected to the Apple watch. They a designing an App that one can use to improve their presentation skills. This app will monitor a person’s voice change as well as some health stats such as, pulse while the person is giving a presentation. Once the presentation is over, it will tell the user how to improve on his presentation skills in terms of voice change, change in tone or hand movement. It uses the data that it recorded. These are some of the many cool projects I got to know about the App Lab.
All this sounded very interesting to me. It made me question Dr. Morton that how can I get involved. His answer was, “As I said, anyone can come here no matter how much experience you have in programming.”