CSExplore Mobile Application

During the summer of 2020 I participated in a virtual internship with RadGrad and worked with three others to create a mobile application called CSExplore. The mobile app is targeted towards Hawaii high school students and aims to improve the Computer Science pipeline from high school to college by encouraging interest and awareness in Computer Science. It offers engaging content that will allow students to learn more about Computer Science topics and connect them to local CS communities and opportunities.

Our first step towards creating CSExplore involved doing a lot of research into the different resources available for learning Computer Science as well as what kind of tools we could use to create the app. In addition, we also individually created wireframe mockups on how we each imagined the application to look like and what kind of features it would have. After combining our research results we decided to create the application using React Native and Javascript while also using Expo to help speed up our development process. We also shared our wireframe mockups with each other and combined features and ideas that seemed to work well while starting our initial app development.

The next step involved each of us creating individual mobile applications on our own. From there, we realized that there was an equal split as to the types of approaches our members had while creating the app. After discussion we labeled these two approaches as the “Whimsical Approach” and the “Professional Approach” and decided to partner up in order to create two different CSExplore apps. By doing so we hoped to make apps that would appeal to two different types of students.

Personally, I worked on the Whimsical Approach with my partner Quinne. The GitHub for our mobile application can be viewed here. Our app uses a Hawaii theme and featured colorful background and graphics in addition to fun activities for users to use. Throughout the development process I gained experience using React Native and Expo, specifically in making mobile pages, using different navigation types, and managing data throughout the app.

At the end of the virtual internship we presented CSExplore at the SURE Symposium. Below is a still image of the poster we presented (the actual poster featured animated gifs to showcase overviews of each approach).