WeserPlaner is a work-in-progress Android app for students at the University of Bremen that allows the user to download their schedule from their Stud.IP account, as well as viewing the offers available in all of the canteens operated by the Studierendenwerk Bremen. Handy features are available, such as adding new events and editing existing events, filtering canteen offers only for such that conform to the user's dietary and ethical preferences (e.g. only displaying vegetarian foods), and filtering out any offers including substances the user is allergic against.
- Downloading and creating events, as well as displaying them.
- Downloading canteen offers, filtering them, and viewing details.
- Viewing additional information on the canteen (opening hours, news).
- Storing multiple timetables is supported.
Currently, nothing is outright broken, but a few things may be bodged together badly.
- Adding exams, homework, etc.: users will be able to add any tasks they need to do as reminders. Those can be associated with events that either have been downloaded from the user's Stud.IP schedule, or ones the user has created manually. An overview will be provided that allows the user to have, well, an overview of everything they need to do.
- Finding your room: I'd like to add a feature that makes finding a specific room on the university's campus much easier than it is now. The university website does have a feature that, in theory, should do exactly that, but it works very poorly and does not list all rooms. My idea would be that the user could type in a room, the app could then make suggestions on which room the user may want to find based on the input, and then show the user a floor plan with the room highlighted.
- This could prove quite difficult though, as I do not have access to the university's proper floor plans. My best bet would be to either use the ones avalable online to create my own ones, or draw ones from scratch. As for finding all the rooms, I may have to walk around the university and find all rooms myself.
- Some improvements to the Play Store screenshots are sorely needed...
Because:
- I know Android development and it's a lot easier for me to work on an app using a framework I already know than to learn a new one while still trying to keep up with my responsibilities at university, and
- because Apple is a greedy company that charges thousands for laptops, phones, as well as $99 a year for a developer account, which are all requirements (sans the phone, if I was to use their simulator, which isn't ideal) and I, as a student, simply do not have the money for that.
I may reconsider once Apple finally opens up iOS for third-party apps.
The colour scheme is inspired by the University of Bremen's colour scheme, as well as the city of Bremen's colour scheme. The logo represents both the University of Bremen as well as (kind of) the Weserstadion, our local sports stadium.
I admit the Weserstadion idea only came to me after I had created the logo.
