If you own horses, you’ve probably accepted the reality that these animals are high maintenance. But keeping up with all the care a horse requires is easier to manage thanks to EquiTracker, an app developed for the horse community by Bachelor of Computing Science student Steve Lyall.

He designed EquiTracker to help hobbyist and horse professionals keep track of their horses’ unique care routines, whether they have a single horse or a herd. Users can log and schedule veterinarian visits, hoof care, vaccinations, and other tasks important to their horses’ health and performance.

Lyall, who graduates this month, first created the app as his class project for an introductory mobile app development course taught by Computing Science faculty member Dr. Haytham El Miligi. Lyall published EquiTracker on GooglePlay and moved on—but it received so many downloads and requests from users for more features, that he updated the app this spring with greater customization, and small ads to help fund continued development.

When it came to choosing a subject for his app, Lyall saw a need. He has been in the horse community for a few years, and knows equine care can be challenging. “My initial motivation was to make it easier for people to keep track of all the minutiae of horse care.” He hopes the free app may contribute to better equine health.

Lyall credits El Miligi’s two mobile app classes for engaging him in cutting-edge development that peaked his interest in a career in computing. The project work broadened his experience in working effectively with others—a skill he learned while starting out in arts when he came back to school for his degree.

“I have an advantage having done my first two years in arts,” said Lyall. “Philosophy and psychology are all about human problems that need to be solved. Technology provides the tools, but being able to think critically and be an effective learner is the real value of getting a degree.” He said the first-year philosophy course Introduction to Critical Thinking should be a requirement for computing students.

EquiTracker is available as a free download for Android on GooglePlay.

Change is constant in computing.

“You can’t have a textbook,” Lyall said of El Miligi’s courses. “For midterms he gives us a problem and we have to come up with an app as a solution in 45 minutes.” He found one of El Miligi’s strengths as a faculty member was in recognizing new ways to do things with mobile apps.

EquiTracker grew out of the fall semester introductory course, but in the winter semester, the more advanced course focused on how apps work with others to do more powerful things. Lyall is taking what he learned to expand EquiTracker’s features to work with other apps, and envisions connecting it to the cloud so users can access data on their other devices and home computers.

“Right now I’m looking to use usage data the app is collecting to try to make some decisions about which features are most appropriate to pursue in future,” he said. He is also working to improve interactions between himself as developer and the app’s users.

EquiTracker has been well-received by professionals and hobbyists with over 1,000 downloads from the GooglePlay store to date and good reviews. Lyall says the app will continue to be free, and recommends users donate what they might have spent on an app to the SPCA to support equine care.

“I’m also exploring options that could be helpful to owners of other animals as well,” said Lyall, who is now working in Vancouver as a freelance software developer.