BCoE student develops campus navigation app
February 4, 2016
STARKVILLE, Miss. — “I remember coming here as a freshman from a small town, and this was such a big campus. I felt like I was lost so many times,” said the app developer and senior electrical engineering major. “I decided I could make an app that could help people navigate campus.”
Terence Williams, an Oakland, Mississippi native, followed through with his freshman thought by recently releasing the smartphone app, Bully Walk.
Bully Walk is not Williams’ first app, but it is his first with an MSU connection. While completing another mapping system application, he remembered his confusion as a freshman trying to find his way around campus. It seemed an obvious next step to create an app to solve the common problem many campus newcomers face. Now, after four months of work, it is available for download.
Bully Walk is not an ordinary map application. Upon opening the application, its uniqueness to MSU’s campus is immediately apparent. The app includes every campus building and landmark, and it allows users to follow a guided route from their current location to their destination, whether walking or driving. It also tracks the MSU transit system, enabling users to locate the nearest bus or bus stop. Williams’ hope for Bully Walk is that it will aid new students, as well as visitors on campus, to get from one building to another quickly.
Williams began creating apps after taking a freshman seminar class that inspired him to think in a different way. He knew it was something that he wanted to pursue after spending the semester-long course creating a different app each week.
“I had no knowledge of app development at all until I took the seminar class “I Program”, and from there on I was self-taught,” said Williams.
Since that class, he has released eight apps to the Apple Store as part of a developer program with the technology giant, reaching customers around the world. The inspiration behind Williams’ apps come mostly from personal ideas, although he was once approached through social media to create a trivia app for a German television show.
Currently, Williams is working with the MSU Entrepreneurship Center to start his own app developing brand. Since app developing is a passion he has enjoyed, Williams said that the Entrepreneurship Center gives him a great avenue to turn that into a business.
Bully Walk is available as a free download on the Apple app store.
Bagley College is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu.
By: Emile Creel