Campus Interactive Map Application

BackgroundEvery year, students, especially first-year students, have difficulty navigating Ohio Northern University's campus and struggle to find the buildings where their classes are held.While there are solutions that currently exist, such as campus signage, Google/Apple Maps, the Ohio Northern University Mobile App/University Website, and new student orientation tour events, no approach has adequately resolved the issue; causing the problem to reoccur every year for new students.The primary issue with the competing solutions is that they either do not have mobile-friendly functionality, require the student to have a good memory/understanding of campus, or do not contain university-specific information, such as landmarks, or classroom/office locations.With the issue and pain points isolated, the team can create an application that marries the strengths of each idea, while avoiding the identified pain points.In the proposed application, there will need to be a high focus on privacy and data security, as certain aspects or features of the project involve knowing people's location and where they are going.In addition to location security, the application will need to comply with the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), which focuses on keeping student information confidential.With that, the application has to be developed securely and comprehensively to encapsulate the entirety of the campus.To begin scoping features for the application, the team distributed a student survey to gather metrics on how students currently navigate campus.The survey, found in Appendix B, included questions that determined their class year, knowledge of the location of certain buildings, understanding of the acronyms for buildings that may appear in their schedule, and how often the students leveraged the existing Ohio Northern University Mobile App.This helped the team understand the potential knowledge gap and how widely used the University Mobile App was by students.Once the results were analyzed by the team, they were then communicated to the client who provided input on the proposed primary features, as well as potential functionality the application may provide.This conversation also led to the client providing a Raspberry Pi 4 device to the team to aid in the development process.This project will utilize knowledge learned from various courses in the curriculum, such as User Interface Design, Mobile App Development, Web Development, and Networks and Data Communications classes.The application will need to have a graphical user interface that is easy to use, accessible, and fits with the University branding guidelines.The same design considerations will need to be applied to the development knowledge and experience gained during Mobile App and Web Development since they will be critical to the user experience.Finally, the project will leverage knowledge gained during Networks and Data Communications