Students curious about what’s on the menu at the dining hall will now be able to check any time, anywhere with a new mobile application released by University Housing and University’s Administrative Information Technology Services.
Launched on Nov. 9, the University Residence Hall Dining mobile application runs on Android and iOS smartphones and features functions such as menus, schedules, food ingredients and maps to get to the six dining halls on campus.
“University Housing delivers three million meals a year. You start to get the scope of what we mean by delivering menus,” said Kirsten Ruby, housing spokeswoman. “We have six different dining halls and they each have a different menu.”
Ruby said according to a database, dining menus on the University Housing website are most often viewed by students and residents on campus. Because there are so many dining halls on campus and different menus in each of the halls, it can be hard to share menu information with students, justifying the need for the application, she said.
William Seemann, software engineer with the team that worked on the app, developed the Android version of the application and said it provides mapping functionality and the ability to filter menu items based on ingredients, which is useful for people with food allergies or other dietary restrictions.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
Ruby said University Housing hopes the application can help the students find dining on campus more convenient.
“Our students really love it, and we are very pleased with the reactions we’ve gotten,” Ruby said.
Students also gave suggestions to improve the next version of the application. Ruby said suggestions include being able to check meal balance and credits, adding a search feature and applying a “mark as favorite” function.
Software engineer Alessandro Bellina developed the iOS version of the dining application and said the it will improve students’ dining experiences in University dining halls.
“It is a real treat to be able to code apps that make student life at Illinois an even better experience,” Bellina said. “It is great to think students will use this app daily.”
Students can download the application for free from the Apple Store or Google Play.
Zike can be reached at [email protected].
