App tracks UCLA gyms’ traffic

UCLA Recreation recently adapted an iPhone application that tracks the traffic in recreation centers to fit the UCLA community.

The free app, called GymFlow, monitors how crowded UCLA’s recreation centers are at any given time and estimates the general activity, said Katherine McDonald, a student supervisor at the John Wooden Center who helped adapt the app for UCLA.

Alumni from the University of Southern California originally created the app and launched it earlier this year. McDonald,a fourth-year applied mathematics student, said she worked with the alumni to supply them data about UCLA recreation centers so the app could be adapted.

For students concerned with UCLA facilities, the app covers the John Wooden Center, the Kinross Recreation Facility and all five pools on campus. It also lists all hours for each room inside the John Wooden Center as well as the schedule of fitness classes offered at the John Wooden Center. Currently, the app is only available for iPhones, but the developers are currently working on the Android version.

McDonald, said she began tracking the traffic of each room in the gym every hour as part of her work duties. Because of her background in math, she said she wanted to take the numbers and turn them into something that students could easily understand.

McDonald said she thought gym patrons would appreciate knowing how crowded the gym would be before they made their visit.

An app development team released an updated version of the app, which was adapted to UCLA, during the first week of fall quarter, but the marketing campaign did not officially launch until last week.

During the first week that the UCLA version was released, the app received more than 1,000 downloads, McDonald said.

The app calculates the overall traffic of the gym through how many BruinCards have been swiped. Traffic in individual rooms is physically counted by a supervisor and updated on the app every hour.

The app describes traffic through three different levels: slow, moderate and busy. McDonald said she created the scale based on data that she analyzed from the past two years of room occupation.

Some students who regularly attend the gym said the information from the app will cause them to change the way they schedule their gym visits.

Royce Kurahara, a second-year aerospace engineering student, said he comes to the gym about four times a week and downloaded the app as soon as he heard about it.

He said the app information seems fairly accurate so far, and if the numbers continue to be reliable, it’ll make a big difference in the way he plans his workout.

Third-year psychobiology student Niki Parikh said she thinks the app will help her maximize her time at the Wooden Center and avoid long lines for the machines.

“I’ll create a work out plan for the hour that I have, and then I’ll end up wasting half of it waiting for machines,” Parikh said. She said that she started going to the gym in her apartment instead of the Wooden Center to avoid wasting time.

Students would complain about how busy the gym was, said Ariel Krakowsky, a student supervisor at the Wooden Center and a fourth-year sociology student.

She added that she thinks the app needs to be marketed well for it to be effective.

Right now, the app also covers Group Exercise classes, which are specific to those who purchase fitness passes. McDonald said she plans on expanding the app to include all UCLA Instructional classes held in UCLA gyms or at the pools, including dance classes, swim lessons, yoga classes, among others.