PHOTO COURTESY/ Study Buddy
With only minutes left to receive approval from Apple App Reviews, it seemed as if developer, senior Connor Dang’s new app Study Buddy would not meet its scheduled release date for May 29. The approval process was an emotional roller coaster for him, rising with excitement and slowly dropping with each return from Apple reviewers for various reasons. Only one minute past the deadline for approval, he received notice of the app’s pending release and the exhilarating moment of success that his team of developers and artists had worked towards for months.
Connor Dang, as well as seniors Nathan Coligado, Jacob Gong, Amanda Tsang, Megan Zhang and freshman Carin Dang worked together to develop Study Buddy, an interactive app designed to help students view their gradebook and calculate possible grade changes. The app’s pixelated virtual buddies serve as an incentive for students to check their grades daily in order to collect in-app currency and unlock more characters.
“My favorite part about this experience is how I was able to transform my vision into a real mobile app,” Connor Dang said. “Even as a programmer, I’m impressed how far I really made it, especially since I began the project not knowing where to start. I’ve made small, random apps in the past and shared them with my friends, but Study Buddy is an app that I can share to the TCUSD community.”
Connor Dang first developed a prototype of the app during a hackathon in late June 2019. Inspired by the original Grades app, he started as the sole programmer of the app, working in creative bursts to focus on developing certain aspects of the app. As his project grew, he reached out to friends who were interested in designing character art and creating promotional content for the app.
“Since we were friends, we were able to work together really well,” Tsang said. “However, most of our developers are seniors, so we were overwhelmed with college applications and other forms we needed to fill out, but we did our best to use our lunchtimes to meet up and discuss the app.”
The group started production in July 2019 and met throughout the year to finalize the design. When discussing the app’s layout and details, the team would often communicate through video call and group message to share their ideas. Over the course of several months, the members brainstormed designs while balancing their schoolwork and other responsibilities.
“I’ve always wanted to create a better platform for students to check their grades in a fun way,” Carin Dang said. “I really love how my artwork will be used to encourage students in this app. Being an artist, I want to connect with the students through the characters we created, depending on their interests.”
To make the app more engaging, design artists created the unique characters that app users can collect as they collect reward coins through daily check-ins and maintaining good grades. Artists brainstormed ideas for different characters before sketching a basic form in pixel art. Then, artists would draw variations of the character showing emotions or evolution, each consisting of ten stop motion frames for animation. Additionally, artists created buttons and clip art to enhance the design layout. Once finalized, Connor Dang placed the designs into the app.
“As designers, our goal is to help motivate them to study and get better grades through the character collection system,” Gong said. “I really valued the experience of discussing various problems with my friends and seeing my art be implemented into an app that can positively impact others.”
The app is available on iOS only and connects to students’ Aeries accounts to display raw data that is accessible to all students in a user-friendly interface. For now, the app is accessible to TCUSD students exclusively, in honor of the TCHS Class of 2020. In the future, the team hopes to expand to grading systems aside from Aeries and extend app availability to other school districts.