Students design app to help researcher track moods
Last week, four seniors presented their innovation center final group project over Zoom. While the circumstances were not ideal, the virtual means of communication fit the theme. Jordan Buccelli, Jack Callaghan, Nöel Michel and Maria Dascola discussed their original app creation.
The senior engineering majors were asked to create a functional app to help UD psychology associate professor Erin O’Mara Kunz with her research: how self-positivity and self-image correlate with a woman’s menstrual cycle and fertility levels.
“Women’s health, behavior and psychological processes are impacted by the shifting of fertility-related hormones throughout the menstrual cycle,” O’Mara Kunz said. “In particular, psychologists have found that many psychological processes vary based on whether a woman is ovulating or not.”
The professor’s proposed research plan involves monitoring the responses and patterns of first-year female students, ideally next fall. In order to do so, O’Mara Kunz needed an app that would be easily accessible and functional for herself and the participants.
That’s where the engineering students came in.
Buccelli, Callaghan, Michel and Dascola began designing the app in August 2019. They utilized software programs such as Adobe Xd, Avocode and Firebase for coding and data storage.
In the end, the group created a working app for both Apple and Android operating systems, but one was more successful than the other.
“We had trouble connecting the Android studio app to the Firebase. If I fixed something, a new error would come up,” Dascola said. The group reported it was certain, however, that the errors could be fixed next year by a new team of engineering students.
Overall, the team members said they were proud of the end results — especially after dealing with complexities of working as a team remotely due to COVID-19. Their client was pleased, as well.
“It looks really great. You guys did an awesome job,” O’Mara Kunz said at the end of the presentation.