MyResLife
Cornell residential life app - CampusGroups auth, live hall data, App Store release.
Problem
Alice Cook House at Cornell needed one place for residents to find house events, check in to dining, track mail, and get day-to-day house communications - instead of piecing it together from emails, group chats, and paper signs.
System design & approach
Rather than standing up a separate account system, the app authenticates against CampusGroups - the login residents already use - and pulls live, Firestore-backed data for halls and events, so the information in the app stays current instead of going stale between updates. I built the Flutter client end to end: the CampusGroups OAuth login, the live Firestore-backed hall and event data, and a release path that took the app all the way to the App Store.
Challenges
Wiring CampusGroups' existing OAuth flow into a Flutter client - rather than a from-scratch account system - meant working within an identity system I didn't control. And an app like this only earns repeat use if the data in it is trustworthy: if the house calendar or dining check-in is stale, people stop opening it, so keeping hall and event data live through Firestore instead of static was a real requirement, not a nice-to-have.
My role
I built the Flutter client with CampusGroups OAuth login and live Firestore-backed hall data. We shipped it to the App Store together for students, staff, and faculty in the house.
Retrospective
A 40% increase in engagement, shipped for thousands of Cornell students, staff, and faculty, and a real App Store release - not a demo build.
Shipping a real consumer-facing mobile app end to end: integrating with an existing institutional auth system instead of building my own, keeping data live rather than static so the app stays worth opening, and what it actually takes to get something through App Store release.
- Flutter
- Firebase