Age cannot be a limit to what you can achieve, and there can be no limit to how much you can achieve. This has yet again been proved by two sophomores at KAIST, Hee On Choi and Hokwen Joung. They have developed The App of KAIST, a mobile application for KAIST in English. This is the first application made fully in English and thus, is a stepping stone for KAIST to become a more international-friendly university. The KAIST Herald met with Choi and Joung to discuss some attributes of the application, the first of its kind.

[Choi] Hi, my name is Hee On Choi, and I am majoring in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As an international student, I see the day-to-day problems faced by students when they first come to KAIST. I have been deeply involved with the activities of International Scholar and Student Services Team (ISSST), which has been established solely to cater to the needs of international students at KAIST. I was strongly encouraged by the effort expended by ISSST to make life better in every aspect for international students. Their unwavering energy and zeal prompted me to do my little bit in helping them in whatever way I could, and I found that making a database of maps, frequently asked questions (FAQ), and contacts would help decrease the workload off the shoulders of ISSST.

[Joung] Hello, my name is Hokwen Joung, and I am majoring in the Department of Computer Science. My associations with both ISSST and Hee On have been ever since I came to KAIST, and I feel lucky to share their ideas, concerns, and views. Personally, I really wanted to develop some kind of a mobile application. Up till last winter, I did not know that I would be stepping ahead to develop The App of KAIST. My role was to handle all the programming required for the application from its very initial stages to its launch as a beta version on Google Play.

[Choi] Indeed, we faced a lot of disappointments. There were times when we were stuck and did not know which direction to move in. Making decisions about how to compile and compress all the data in a neat fashion was an arduous task.

[Joung] Hee On had come up with the idea of directly linking each part of the application with another. For example, we have three major sections: map, contacts, and FAQ. We wanted contacts to directly link to map, and FAQ to directly link with important contacts. When I first listened to his idea, I said, “This is next to impossible.” But in the end, we did achieve it, and that was sheer delight. I have to say that this journey was not an easy one, but now that we have finished it, it surely has been one of the best learning experiences of my life!

[Choi & Joung] The old application is just a website that contains the KAIST map and some other details. The details are in Korean, which is a disadvantage for international students. It needs access to the internet and is not very interactive. The App of KAIST is very user-friendly and an offline application, which means that it can work even without the internet once it is installed. We also decided to utilize “crowd-sourcing,” which gets answers, ideas, and feedbacks from the student community and thus, helping us achieve an in-depth organized pool of information. The search power is also a very strong feature in our application.

[Choi & Joung] We do face a quite a few problems; the application has been launched as a beta version on Google Play, but it cannot be installed on every type of Android or on iPhones. Its efficiency and properties change on different Android devices. And so, we still have a long way to go in making this application meet so many required standards. Being full time students, we also find it hard to focus on this application during the semester. We plan to work on extending its scope during the vacations. We hope that our application may someday truly achieve the designation of its name, The App of KAIST.