Information about classes, the most important events and employees – all of this can be now found in a mobile application developed as part of the cooperation between students of Wrocław University of Science and Technology and students of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. The app can already be downloaded.

The idea to develop an application for students was born in connection with the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art at the Academy of Art and Design. The works on the project were initiated and tutored by Krzysztof Waśko, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Department of IT and System Engineering, WUST and Anna Trojanowska, Ph.D., vice-dean of the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art, the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław.

– I have been teaching at the Academy of Art and Design for several years. My course is a lecture combined with the "Interface Theory and Practice” laboratory classes. Also, an agreement between the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, WUST and the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art, AAD, allows us to run interdisciplinary classes, in which students of both universities take part together. The application is the effect of these classes – says Prof. Krzysztof Waśko.

All information in one place

The project was to develop a mobile app that would inform students of the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art about current and upcoming events at the university in real time. It can be also used to find information about the faculty, the departments, the laboratories and the employees, as well as about important contacts and telephone numbers.

– In addition, the user has access to the timetable for each field and year of study. The app “cooperates” with the modern CMS-Strapi content management system, which allows you to easily modify and manage the content of the mobile application – explains Prof. Waśko.

The project was implemented by two teams – young programmers from Wrocław University of Science and Technology, studying Computer Science at our Faculty: Paulina Jacykowska, Agnieszka Ryl, Marcin Szuster and Bartosz Kulig, and a team of designers from the Academy of Art and Design – 4th year students at the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art: Katarzyna Jania, Anna Ludwin, Kacper Malaga and Magdalena Nowak.

Engineering and artistic cooperation

The structure of the application, its content and the first sketches of the screens were prepared by a team led by Anna Trojanowska, vice-dean of the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Media Art. This work served as a basis for the programmers to develop interactive mock-ups of the application prototype. The final version of the application was agreed during subsequent meetings.
From that moment on, the work was carried out in parallel – programmers generated code, and artists delivered new multimedia components of the application. Meanwhile, works progressed on the content management module (CMS), which was tested on an ongoing basis by introducing the "start" content of the application.

– The biggest challenge during the implementation of the project was to organize the work of two groups coming from completely different environments – future artists and future engineers. It seems to me that we have managed to develop a form of communication that has worked very well in practice – says Prof. Waśko.

Work on the application lasted eight months. It can be downloaded both via the App Store for iOS devices and via the Google Play Store for Android devices.