By Gavin Arucan | Staff Writer

The KCC mobile app, which was first implemented during the 2015 Fall semester, serves as a hub for various tools to assist students during their time at KCC. Students can conveniently view their schedule, the campus map, a calendar of events, and more all in one place.

The app was originally requested by the Student Congress as a way to ease college student life. When designing the app, the programmers drew inspiration from dozens of other college’s apps while also listening to students’ needs through multiple Student Congress meetings. According to programmer Craig Spurrier, the app team made sure that the app was improving and not just repeating information that one could easily find on the KCC website or online.

“We talked about doing something with social media in the app, but Twitter does a much better job at that,” said Spurrier. “There’s already a Twitter app so why try to reinvent it? We focused on what things we can do to make a better experience for students.”

There were also student employees who worked on programming and designing the app, so they had a lot of input as to what they would want in a KCC app. The most used tools in the app tend to be the campus map and the My Schedule option.

The app, like most other mobile apps, is constantly evolving, but the programming team is currently working on a few new features that should aid students who use the app even more.

One of these new features to be implemented is a user-friendly bus schedule. As a frequent bus rider himself, Spurrier describes the current DaBus app as “not very helpful.” Most bus riders seem to agree as the official DaBus app, which hasn’t been updated since 2012, sits at a 2.5/5 star rating on Apple App Store. Since many students take the bus to school every day, the KCC app team hopes to provide a better working bus schedule to make it easier and quicker for students to catch their bus.

Another new feature will be a digital student ID to complement the physical ones any KCC student may obtain at Lama Library. With this tool, students will be able to check out library books using only their phone rather than carrying an ID in a wallet all the time. The team is also working on implementing a “My Bill” feature for students to view what they owe toward tuition and other fees and be able to pay from the app.

One longer term goal that the team hopes to achieve is proper Laulima integration. The app currently has an option to access Laulima, but it’s only a link to the website.

The KCC app, simply named Kapiʻolani Community College, is available on both iOS and Android for free.