I have long wondered when Lee University would finally be able to tout an iPhone app in it’s name, and that day is apparently not today. LeeU’s IT team is great but to get little niceties like an iPhone app through the door takes way too much time on top of an already busy load of day to day support. The fact that this app, MOX, ties directly (I’m assuming) with internal data management systems from Datatel is probably the only reason we have anything at all. So, how’s the experience?

I say, it’s a decent first step, but please don’t stop here.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Datatel MOX™, powered by DUB. (Visibility FAIL)

It’s called MOX or Datatel MOX™, powered by DUB. You can get it right here.

On first launch you’ll get a list of available schools like Marietta College, Nipissing University, Lee University, and others. Upon selecting your school, you get a nice little modal pop up asking if you’re sure you’ve selected the right one. What am I, five?

The app from then on will launch to a collection of icons that lead to information about Lee University, assuming you are absolutely sure that’s what you chose. These icons lead to school news, events, contact information for various offices and departments, campus maps, and two confusing areas called My Card and Friends (more on that later).

News

For Lee, the News pseudo-app is mostly a collection of sports and general campus news, all presumably pulled from the news feeds on the main website. In fact, tapping on a news item displays the associated article on the LeeU website in a UIWebView, not in a nicely formatted, mobile friendly way iPhone users are accustomed to. The table of news articles is also extremely long, pulling news posts sometimes up to 70 days ago. I don’t know if I would consider this “news” anymore. Thankfully, you can collapse any news category to limit the number of table cells shown. For example, if you don’t care about the 300 sports posts, you can collapse them so you’re only left with news of general interest. Though, I would love to see some Lee Clarion integration.

Events

The Events pseudo-app for Lee shows events from the All-Inclusive Calendar on Portico. This view only shows to a limited point in the future, which normally would be a good thing. However, as of today, the farthest away event I can see is on September 5. If you wanted to use this app to see the date of the last day of class after a long first day, forget it. Though not as bad as the News section, Events can suffer from that overload syndrome. Put basically, if you don’t care to see all the sporting events: prepare to scroll. Unfortunately, most of the events do not have any description or location information, just a time and date. You are given the option to share an event with someone via email, if you are so inclined. One minor thing about the share via email feature: it automatically sets the subject line to “MOX event: ” plus the title of the event. Who’s gonna know what an MOX event is? Good grief.

Important #’s

Oh, now, this is actually useful. Really useful. Here you can get a nice listing of all the major (and minor) departments on campus and their contact info. Even the Video Production Center is listed, cool. Here’s where it starts getting a bit sticky though. There is a convenient search field at the top of the table, but to use it you must sacrifice the “convenient” part. Example search term: production. Returned results: NO RESULTS. Wah? What about the Video Production center? Try searching for “video” instead and, boom, there it is. Do you see the issue here? If you don’t search for the first word in the department name you’re looking for, you probably won’t find it. That’s too bad and may even confuse some users. Nevertheless, I’m so glad I don’t have to head to http://directory.leeuniversity.edu/ just to find a number.

Maps

Maps are arguably one of the most important and useful features a school’s app can have for new students. If you’re unfamiliar with a campus, it can be quite confusing at first. An app with a great campus map can solve this freshman woe. Maps in MOX for Lee suffers from the same issue, however, as Important #’s. Search for a term like “recreation” and get no results. Search for “devos” and get the result “DeVos Recreation Center.” Again, this is really unacceptable and confusing to users. New students aren’t necessarily going to realize that it is the DeVos Recreation Center, all they care about is the “recreation” part. That being said, the built-in Google Map with custom push-pin locations is really great. Select a building; get a great photo of the building close up. (+1 nice touch points) There’s a small icon at the top right of the maps screen that leads to a blank table view. Odd.

My Card & Friends

It’s hard to really describe what this is or what it’s supposed to do, since I can’t get it to accept my sign up form. (-1 nice touch points) The service is called DUB (*sigh*) and according to the learn more link it’s:

DUB provides you the ability to:

Exchange Contact Info from your Mobile Phone

Contact info is saved directly to your mobile address book.

Receive Automatic Address Book Updates

If any of your friends update their contact info, DUB automatically updates your mobile address book.

Back up your Contacts Securely

Install this Powered by DUB app on a new phone and your mobile address book with all your friends returns.

View all your friends, add new ones and update your info online at www.dubmenow.com

Okay. This isn’t something I’m really interested in. Of course, that doesn’t mean other people could find a use for it. Frankly, having this app fool around with my cleanly maintained contact information is the last thing I want. I imagine that this feature will go unused by most students. It’s a silly feature that probably provides little for the headache I know it will become.

Info

In Info you can find some basic app and school entity info. There are a few buttons to email, call, or visit Help Desk, Lee’s IT Support Team.

Settings.app

Head to iPhone’s Settings app to reset some parameters if this app ever jumps stupid on you. If it does, send Help Desk an email so they know what issue you’re having.

Wrapping Up

A couple of disclaimers, I’m not sure if Lee University IT was completely ready for normal users to start playing around with the app, but it is public and live now so that’s good enough for me. I’m fully aware that many of the issues I’ve mentioned here aren’t necessarily Lee University Information Technology’s fault since the application itself is developed by DubMeNow, Inc. That doesn’t excuse something like event descriptions being completely missing, though. It’s disappointing that Lee students currently are not able to view course and general directory information like shown in the app’s “Datatel University” screen shots. The screen shots on the App Store also show a small notification bar at the bottom (a la Facebook’s iPhone app). I’m not sure what type of notifications these can be, but it would be nice if the LeeU Alert system for emergencies could send Push Notifications to devices with the app installed.

I hinted early in this post about the single biggest problem I see in this app: visibility. This is not a Lee University app for Lee University or by Lee University. It’s not discoverable. You can’t say to yourself, “Hey, I wonder if my new school has an app” and go get it. Search for Lee University on the App Store; you won’t find what you’re looking for. You have to really be in the know and be willing to jump through hoops for a small convenience. No one will do it and that’s sad because it will slow progress.

I’m used to being on the cutting edge so I expect more but I’m also trying to be realistic. In the end I know that there are technical limitations to what can be done, but let’s be honest: they aren’t completely there yet. I think the whole project has potential and can become something really useful. Now if they can just figure out how to get it into the hands of students.

Downloads and Links

Click here to download the app for iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
Click here to visit the Lee University website.

Screenshots