NAUgo Blog Posts

Posted on August 5, 2024

NAUgo did not slow down this summer!

Summer was an opportunity for us to work on policies and processes. With the guidance and wisdom of the NAUgo Steering Committee, we developed the first official NAUgo Roadmap. This allows us to formally request required resources to plan future project work.

And, speaking of the Steering Committee, we formalized some processes there as well. We now have formal voting on issues that affect the app. We have had a great response from committee members and our meeting attendance is at an all time high.

The NAUgo team saw some changes as well. We said goodbye to our graduating designers, Shelby and Sam and welcomed Evan and Veronica. Our lone developer, Manish, has stayed on and continues to do great work.

We released a fun feature called “NAUgo & Student Success” for our incoming freshmen and transfer students. This module highlights all the tools in the app that can assist our new campus students before and after they arrive.

Posted on May 6, 2024

As usual, the AY 23-24 kept NAUgo very busy!

We started the year with our 2nd consecutive “Best Overall Campus App” Appademy Award. This also included an award for the “Best Dining Experience”.

We completed our biggest overall update to the LOUIEgo portal. Students can now add, drop, and swap using our fully responsive class enrollment feature. This upgrade included the display of financial aid data, the “make a payment” portal, and several aesthetic and experiential improvements.

The release of Modo 4.1 in January opened up several opportunities. Our LOUIEgo desktop product benefited from this with new and expanded 3 column layouts allowing us to display more data in an optimal way. Modo’s introduction of the use of templates was an opportunity for us too. We are now using templates to increase student productivity and provide a consistent look and feel across the app.

Posted on September 1, 2022

NAUgo is never idle. This summer, in addition to our Jack’s Card project NAUgo revisited the New Student Orientation Module with amazing success!

• In the summer of 2021 NAUgo worked with our university partners, Modo and TouchNet to release the JacksCard on iPhone and Apple Watch. Continuing the momentum through the year, our teams worked diligently to develop and provide the same functionality for Android users.
• We are proud to offer our digital identification card functionality for both devices in time for the start of the Fall 2022 term. Currently we have over 17,000 users on campus using the JacksCard on their mobile devices!
• Also this summer, “in-person” orientation returned to NAU’s mountain campus after a two-year hiatus due to Covid. NAUgo made major improvements to our orientation module and usage was at an all-time high. The creative and user-experience driven updates were recognized at the Modo 2022 Appademy Awards (held in October) where NAU won the ‘Best New Student Orientation Module’ out of over 300 international participants!

Posted on May 26, 2022

The 2021 – 2022 Academic Year – ‘Jacks are Back’ after a year online our students have returned for the more traditional on-campus experience.  COVID’s impacts resulted in significant change for our students, faculty, and staff and the academic experience.  NAUgo‘s unique functionality has made the transition a little bit easier for everyone.

• Modo 4 Upgrade:
  • A redesigned UI from the top down for better navigation
  • Expanded feature set – extending the application using web-services
• Campus Dining: Our popular Dining Module has been expanded!  We’ve added the ability to see your dining plan, current balance, meal history and transaction history.
• Continuing our support for our students we expanded our Statewide Persona to include our Online population.
• Staffing:  ‘Built For Students – By Students’ – NAUgo is proud of our two Student Designers who have graduated and moved on to new ventures.  It’s what we are all here for!  While their departure was sad it did provide us the opportunity to meet and hire, not just two, but three new Student Designers!

In addition our Student Developer continues to be an integral part of our NAUgo team; developing new features, improvements, and bug fixes.

Posted on August 31, 2021

Summer 2021 was challenging but rewarding. Change keeps things ‘fresh’ and, at NAUgo, we’ve seen a lot of change!

This is what we were up to this summer…

• Digital JacksCard: Currently for iPhone users, this newest feature allows you to get rid of your plastic NAU ID, and access your JacksCard right in your Apple Wallet. This new feature can be used around campus to access buildings and complete money transactions. Students used NAUgo to add their new Digital JacksCard to their Wallet.
• Changing of the guard: The success of NAUgo is in part made possible by its administrative support. NAUgo‘s talented Product Manager and Product Leadership have found new opportunities. NAUgo wishes them the best! We welcomed our new Product Coordinator, Eric Bradford, to the team. He hit the ground running, got up to speed, and now keeps the lights on and the product updates running smoothly. Welcome to the team Eric!
• NAUgo continues to be award-winning. Our student work was recognized with an award for Best Student Driven App and a second place nod for Best New Student Orientation App for our Virtual Orientation Module.

Posted on June 1, 2021

The 2020-2021 academic year was significantly impacted by COVID. Even with such a challenge, the NAUgo adoption continues by leaps and bounds. This year we were able to welcome over 9,000 new users that downloaded the NAUgo app. Even with students attending classes remotely, NAUgo‘s daily screen views increased by 5% since the 2019-2020 academic year.

• Staffing: The NAUgo welcomed two new student developers and a student designer to it’s staff.
• NAUgo supported the mitigation of COVID by hosting tools such as HealthCheck, Occupancy Calculators for Dining Locations and Cline Library, COVID Watch, and Wait Times for advising appointments.
• We launched the new Faculty & Staff Persona, an experience in the app that only includes tools and information for our campus faculty and staff.
• Our remote user testing program was in full swing, continuing to get feedback from our users via surveys, and focus groups conducted over Zoom.

Posted on July 1, 2020

Summer 2020 provided our NAUgo team with some major achievements as well as some unique challenges.

Some of the new developments this summer are as follows…

• The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it and NAUgo was quickly to adapt to the “new normal”.   We created the Coronavirus Crisis Response module to provide students up-to-date information in real time.
• The NAUgo team got a little bigger.  We hired two very talented student workers to assist with design and development tasks.  They quickly became an integral part of the team and continue to prove themselves as invaluable.
• We are proud to announce the addition of LOUIEgo to the NAUgo experience.  LOUIEgo allows students to view LOUIE account information such as class schedule, account balance, holds, to-do list, advisor and graduation information in an easy to read mobile format.
• We launched our first new persona in the app.  In response to the CDC recommendations, NAU cancelled their in-person new student orientations.  The “Welcome New Lumberjacks” persona provided information for our incoming freshmen and transfer students in lieu of the traditional orientations.  Also launching this fall is the “Statewide Campus” persona which provides tools specifically for students across our Arizona campuses.
• NAUgo was recognized again this summer at the Modo Appademy Awards.  We won first place in the “Best App for Health & Wellness” category and runner up in the “Innovative Communication” category.  Whoot! Whoot!

The 2020-2021 academic year promises to be an exciting one with continued improvements.

Posted on May 20, 2020

The 2019-2020 academic year saw the largest increase in app users thus far.  We welcome the over 13,000 new users that downloaded the NAUgo app in the last year and saw an average of over 17,000 screen views per day.

Listed below are just a few of the achievements from this year…

• The Office of Student Affairs, granted a generous marketing budget to NAUgo.  This allowed us to promote the app using flyers, brochures, table tents, stickers, bus shelter posters, and giveaways such as lip balm and post-it folios.
• There was serious development in the NAUgo communication plan.  Currently we have over 5,000 Lumberjacks receiving important messages about events, student support, academic deadlines and free food.
• We have formalized our user testing program and conducted several surveys and app testing sessions.  It continues our commitment that the content of NAUgo be driven by the feedback directly from students.
• The NAUgo design/development team got a little larger this year.  Our first student worker started this fall and have hired two more this spring.  We were also granted our first app developer.
• Another successful year means that we have been able to strengthen our cross-departmental relationships as we continue to work with many campus stakeholders about special events and featured items published in the app.
• In the fall of 2019, the Campus Map underwent a complete overhaul.  Students can now search for locations based on building category, name or number.  They can also get walking or driving directions based on the user’s location.  In December of 2019 the map was launched as the first NAUgo desktop product.

We are very excited to continue improving the NAUgo app to make it even more useful to students, parents, faculty and staff.

How is NAUgo Performing

Posted on August 20, 2019

Summer has been an exciting time for NAUgo.  In June we received the Modo 2019 Appademy Award for Best Student Engagement App.  We kept up the momentum for marketing and promoting the app by participating in NAU New Student Orientation where we introduced the app to incoming freshmen and their parents.

Some of the new developments this summer are as follows…

• The “Welcome New Lumberjacks” module was developed as a collection of information useful to our new freshman class and transfer students.  It features medical, financial and academic resources, student testimonials, and ways to get involved on campus.
• Student testing continues to be an ongoing effort.  All information included in the app is is supported by student feedback.
• This summer saw the first assembly of the NAUgo Steering Committee, a cross-departmental group responsible for making decisions about the trajectory of the app.
• NAUgo now has 6 message channels that students and parents can choose to opt into as well as the global message channel and Emergency Alerts.
• NAUgo partnered with Enrollment Management to support them in their “Summer Melt” efforts.  We developed messaging to engage students throughout the summer to encourage them to choose NAU as their institution of higher learning.

We are very excited to continue improving the NAUgo app to make it even more useful to students, parents, faculty and staff.

Posted on May 11, 2019

It has been an entire school year since the publication of the new NAU smartphone app, NAUgo, and I wanted to welcome the 3,649 new users who downloaded the app.

During the 2018-2019 academic year we implemented many new modules designed to increase student engagement here on the Flagstaff Mountain Campus.  They are as follows…

• Implementation of a modern design and information architecture using action based modules such as Live, Move, Learn and Join In.
• The home screen special feature module has delivered timely information on campus wide events such as Welcome Week, Homecoming, Family Weekend, Commencement, Black History Month, Job Fair Expo and more.
• Students can track campus shuttle locations in real time.
• The Dining module shows which dining locations are open in real time.  It also delivers menu and nutritional information.
• The Campus Maps module has been improved delivering new maps for printer locations, ATMs, visitor parking and event venues just to name a few.
• The Events module has been optimized and now delivers information on thousands of events annually.
• The Louie’s Leftovers program utilized NAUgo‘s communication capability to make food available to our food insecure students and reduce food waste across campus.
• Student Employees used the Web Clock feature to clock in and out of their student jobs.

And much, much more.

We are very excited to continue improving the NAUgo app to make it even more useful to students, parents, faculty and staff.