In mid 2019, I was approached by my friend, Ephraim Zimmerman, to develop an app for Northwestern University's OLLI program, a program that offers courses to adults over age 50. Effie had been working on the app for almost 6 months before I joined, planning out what the app would be with the OLLI staff at Northwestern. I was brought on to build the Android version of the app and he would build the iOS version.
The app would be fairly simple in its functionality, consisting of a variety of links, a way for members to contact OLLI, and a way for OLLI to send notifications out to their members. A major design constraint was that it needed to be extremely simple to use, as many of its users wouldn’t be great with technology.
Constant, tedious reviews with OLLI staff and a change in OLLI leadership delayed the project by several months. However, the app was eventually released in May of 2020. Unfortunately, the app wasn’t used as much as we’d hoped due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The OLLI at Northwestern App was the second android app I had worked on. The app was very simple and straightforward. There wasn’t any kind of account system or any complex database functionality, all it had to do was display a variety of links, and show announcements posted by OLLI’s staff.
To build the app, I used Android Studio and Java. The app was built natively for Android. For the backend, we used Google Firebase.
App Features
- Receive notifications pushed by app OLLI admins
- Access various OLLI links
- A page for users to contact OLLI
- Posting page for OLLI admins to send out announcements
