Progress: Slowly, but Surely

While deadlines often cause anxiety in most students, Team Chinchilla has risen and made several revelations since beginning our project!

Although a small but, in our professional opinion, necessary feature, we are proud to say that our application logo is coming along nicely! What began as a quick sketch among a few other small sketches has now appeared in digital form. Using GIMP, I've made substantial progress regarding our little Chinchilla Chat logo. See below:

Early sketches for our app's logo.

The current appearance of logo in digital form.

The logo is not finished by any means. We plan to add text (the app name) and eyes to our furry mascot. The animal is, of course, a chinchilla. The bandana represents the casualness, carefreeness, and LGBT+-friendliness of our app, Chinchilla Chat. The rainbow is associated with LGBT+ pride in general.

We've also learned a lot outside of programming specifically for our Android application. Because we were tasked with presenting and demonstrating Android features this week, we learned a lot about speech recognition and text-to-speech features of Android applications. Because our app is a chat app, it involves a lot of text. Adding speech recognition features could allow us to accommodate drivers using the application or individuals who simply cannot access the app by typing and require speech recognition to use it. Text-to-speech would also be helpful for similar reasons, but seems less mandatory. It may not be a feature that has use for our app, but we need to consider both of these features more in the immediate future. However, because we want Chinchilla Chat to be as private and anonymous as possible, requesting permission from users to access their microphone could seem intrusive to some. Again, these features need more consideration. On the plus side, now that we know how to implement these features in general, it will not be too difficult when we write the code for our app if we decide to utilize said features.

We believe that most of our Screens have been created or designed so far. We know what our menus should look like, what color schemes we hope to use, and which screens each button should lead to upon being tapped. I know this seems pretty vague, but our app is more about privately conversing with other individuals than about having dozens of screens. Currently, we are focusing on implementing our most basic features before we move on to enhancements such as custom colors and speech bubbles in chats.

This week, we're hoping to get all of the screens we have planned at this time into the actual program in Android Studio and making sure each button correctly opens the appropriate activity. We'll also be researching more about implementing live chats and more features we can implement using Firebase. We have a lot to do, but we're fairly satisfied with the progress we've made in just a few weeks!

Meet Team Chinchilla

Team Chinchilla is the team behind Chinchilla Chat. This team was formed for Dr. Forrest Stonedahl's CSC 490: Senior Inquiry class, which is an (Android) app development class at Augustana College that fulfills a senior research requirement for computer science majors. So who are the students behind this project?

Angelica

Angelica (she/her) is a computer science major who is the secretary for Augustana's Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Given her active involvement in the LGBTQ+ community on campus and her computer science background, it should be no surprise that Angelica is interested in working on this project. Angelica hopes to make an app that will be a useful tool in forming a stronger LGBTQ+ community at Augustana College.

Above is an image of Gus the Viking (source) who very well might be Angelica.

Vecna

Vecna (they/them) is a math and computer science double major. They aren't super active in GSA, but they do attend meetings about half of the time. As a privacy enthusiast, Vecna loves the idea of being able to hide their identity, and as a nonbinary/queer person, they know how hard it can be to find other students like them. They hope to add a lot of privacy features to Chinchilla Chat.

Above is an image of Gus the Viking (source) who very well might be Vecna.

Special Thanks to Avery

Avery (they/them) was, unfortunately, unable to be an active part of this project this term, but they were the one who came up with the idea for the app originally.

Introduction

What is Chinchilla Chat?

This app's purpose is to form connections anonymously between members of the LGBTQ+ community at Augustana College. Users of this app can begin to develop friendships, romantic relationships, and/or receive or give advice.

Why are users anonymous?

There are many LGBTQ+ individuals who are not "out" yet. Being "out" means that that person has revealed to either certain people or to everyone their sexual orientation or gender identity. Remaining anonymous allows users discussing their identities to avoid being outed by chat partners who may either purposefully or accidentally out other users. 

How will it work?

Users would sign up with their assigned Augustana email to verify that they are a student and to limit them to only one account (unless they have changed their name and have access to another email through the college). Then, once the user has verified their email and has logged in, they can find a chat partner and begin having a conversation. Unless the user wants to reveal their identity, each user is anonymous according to other users they interact with.

What are the risks?

Any Augustana College student with access to their Augustana email can sign up for this app. While this requirement allows any student to seek advice and form bonds on the app, it also allows individuals with Augustana emails to abuse the anonymity that comes with the app. However, users can flag others, sending the reported user's information and some evidence behind the report to admins of the app. If the user has been wrongly flagged (determined using evidence from the reporter's reasoning and possibly a section of the chat session), their access to the app can be restored. If the report is justified, their email will be suspended from using the app entirely. On the other hand, if a user wants to block another user from communicating with them further, they will not be required to flag them if they do not find it necessary to do so.

What's the point?

Many LGBTQ+ students attend Augustana College. There are also many prospective Augustana students who identify as something other than cisgender and/or heterosexual. These students may find it more difficult to fit in and find a group of friends who accept their identities. There are also students who may seek advice regarding LGBTQ+ issues and/or experiences that they cannot find anywhere else. Students will be able to share their experiences regarding a variety of topics--dating, transitioning, family, coming out--and hopefully these conversations will resonate with others, making them feel safer, more accepted, and less alone at Augustana College.

Chinchilla Chat hopes to impress prospective Augustana College students as well as to help current students form friendly relationships with students they may not have met otherwise.