New apps let students punch in, map out

This fall, two new apps have burst onto the Bradley scene: Flok and Campus Maps.

Flok was brought to campus by the Activity Council of Bradley University (ACBU) to augment its activities planned for this semester.

“Flok is essentially a virtual punch card,” ACBU president Helen Lagerblade said. “It allows students to check in at our events and get a punch. After you download the app and select ACBU the first time, the only thing you have to do when you come to an event is make sure your Bluetooth is turned on, and it will check you in on its own.”

The Flok app is connected to a reward system, according to Lagerblade.

“If someone comes to 15 of our 25 events, they are entered into a raffle for a $100 gift card to the place of their choice,” Lagerblade, a senior communication major, said. “We are also planning on giving out smaller prizes at select events to those that have already checked in that night.”

This is not the first time ACBU has utilized some type of punch card-reward system.

“Previously, we used physical punch cards at our movie events,” ACBU marketing coordinator Audrey Ruppel said. “Those movie punch cards seemed to get us a lot of returning students so we decided to expand the idea and make it virtual.”

Over 250 students have downloaded the app as of Sept. 8, and Ruppel said ACBU sees this as a good sign.

“With Flok we want to reward those who are loyal to ACBU and encourage others to be more loyal,” Ruppel, a senior graphic design and Spanish major, said. “We’re hoping this app increases engagement and involvement in our activities.”

The other app that’s come to the Hilltop is Campus Maps.

“My app helps students navigate and move about their campus,” Vikram Bhandari, founder and CEO of Campus Maps, said. “It has a searchable database of academic and administrative buildings and can create routes and directions to those buildings.”

Bhandari said the app is used by more than a million students and contains maps of college campuses across the country.

“There are actually several hundred Bradley students using the app already, which is pretty impressive considering we haven’t done any official outreach to the college,” Bhandari said. “I think those students are using it because it’s much more responsive and interactive than a PDF and because it’s compatible with their smartphones.”

Bhandari said he originally created the app his sophomore year at the University of Maryland College Park for personal use, but he quickly found himself bombarded by requests for it by his peers.

“Attending college involves a lot of information hunting and tricky navigating,” Bhandari said. “I think there’s a demand for all that disparate information to be in one place and my app responds to that demand.”

Both apps are available for free on iPhone and Android devices.