React Native Heroes

Politecnico di Torino is one of the few Italian universities with an internal IT department: many of the operational services that support the daily activities of thousands of students are built and maintained internally, usually in a closed-source fashion. PoliTO Students - the new mobile application for students - started in this context, but was taken as an opportunity to experiment with novel methodologies: open source, user-centered design and student involvement.
In this talk we will share our journey building the first official university-led open source project at PoliTO and possibly the first ever open university app in Italy. We’ll see how our bespoke design system makes the app feel native on all platforms, how the UX was shaped collaboratively and the game changing role of open and innovative methods in the public sector.