An innovative planning tool app may be the way to get students excited about group projects.
The new mobile app, named “Ignite,” launched on Sept. 9, 2015. It was designed to help smooth out and shrink the communication gaps that come when trying to organize a group activity. The app can help plan anything from study group sessions to dinner parties or team meetings.
Vlad Enache, the Founder of the Ignite app, described what makes Ignite different.
“With Ignite, basically we start at the idea stage which is great for even less formal get-togethers and even things that you’re not even sure whether you’re going to do or not,” Enache said.
He said a student planning a study session with a few other students for an upcoming mid-term exam could use the app to find out what time works best for everyone.
Instead of sending off separate emails to each person or a generic group chat message, hoping they respond in a timely manner, the student would go into Ignite and post their idea for a place and time.
For those classmates interested, they can respond to the student’s idea for a place and time that works for them or opt-in to the student’s post if it fits well. The event planning process begins once enough of the classmates have opted in to the student’s idea and by ways of comments, lists, and polls between attendees to the event other details are worked out.
“It also has a whole collective decision aspect to it,” Enache said. “You guys can suggest and vote on times and locations. You can also create polls like ‘Who’s bringing what?’, ‘What should the theme of the event be?’ or ‘What topics should we discuss?”
The specific layout omits the need to run back and forth between conversations of interested party members to collaborate and connect ideas and schedules.
Enache’s business partner, Andrei Enache, explained the different venues they are using to help promote their app and get it out there in the open.
“We do events; we’ll host one per week. Next week we’ll be in San Francisco and it’s going to be big because of TechCrunch, (which is) probably one of the biggest, largest news magazines on apps and technology,” Andrei Enache said.
TechCrunch, one of the largest magazines in technology, is hosting the convention where Ignite is going to promote their app.
Andrei Enache also said Apple helped them promote a beta version of their mobile app by featuring it in about 21 countries in Europe and Australia before its official release on Sept 9, 2015.
Andrei Enache said it is a lot easier to deal with when it’s all in one place with a whole bunch of people trying to plan and pin together several different schedules it.
“With (Ignite) you can have several different ideas running parallel and find which one actually is the most viable,” Enache said. “Whereas with texting you can’t really do a bunch of conversations parallel, because you would just end up frustrating everybody, so this way you can actually play with your ideas a little more and see what other ideas other people have.”
