New Penn Mobile feature will calculate the cost of each swipe for all meal plans

Penn Labs will create a new dining plan calculator on the Penn Mobile app to calculate the respective costs of one meal swipe and one dining dollar under the various meal plans provided by Penn Dining. 

The update will also provide students with a predicted date of when they will run out of meal swipes and dining dollars, Engineering sophomore and Penn Mobile team member Justin Lieb said. Engineering senior and co-lead of Penn Mobile Dominic Holmes added that the feature will be available by the end of this semester. The Penn Mobile app currently only shows students' balance of dining dollars and meal swipes under their respective meal plans.

Holmes said Penn Mobile has recently implemented account systems which allow access to Penn Mobile users' dining dollar and meal swipe data. Holmes added that he hopes this new feature can recommend dining plans that better fit students’ dining habits. 

“[Penn Labs] is trying to use that data we have never had before to give new perspectives," Holmes said. "If you’re spending a lot of swipes every week, we can show you a graph which shows your trajectory over time in that.” 

Lieb said he believes the biggest impact of the new update would be the estimated date that students run out of meal swipes and dining dollars. 

“We’re hoping that people can see 'oh I’m going to have too many dining dollars' or 'wow I’m not using enough swipes' to hopefully curve that behavior to be more financially conscious,” Lieb said. 

Holmes added that the dining plan update would offer revealing data about certain meal plans, such as the Take Your Pick 13 plan which has the highest cost to swipe ratio at $42 per swipe.

The new dining plan calculator will ultimately be available on both iOS and Android, but the feature will first be launched for iOS by the end of the semester, Holmes said.

Former Penn Mobile design lead and College senior Valencia Fu, who previously worked on designing the dining calculator feature, said she initially took inspiration from the Apple Health & Fitness app to create the graphics. Fu added that Penn Labs has a responsibility to increase transparency and access to data for students.

"I don’t feel that Penn is trying to hide these things necessarily," Fu said. "Anyone who does the math can see what plans are more monetarily worth it.”  

College first year Katrina Murray said she believes the new feature will help students who want to budget their meal swipes and dining dollars.

Penn Labs first released Penn Mobile in 2015 and revamped the app in 2016 to allow students to check dining hall hours, book group study rooms in Huntsman Hall, and monitor the status of laundry machines. Penn Labs has designed other services for students such as Penn Course Review, Penn Clubs, and Penn Course Alert.