Hakeem Hasan, a senior majoring in electrical engineering, pulls out his Android phone and uses his thumb to quickly scroll across the screen. However, he doesn’t pull up Twitter. He doesn’t send a text message, and his eyes are not glazed with boredom or exhaustion. He is alert. He is proud.

Hasan tilts the screen to reveal a logo of colored letter tiles; they read MOWO, short for More Words. As the app loads, a display of eight letters are presented, and the screen prompts its user to make a word. Hasan developed this app, a word game similar to the Words with Friends craze and has garnered 3,000 online players and 5,000 total players in just a few months.

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“The app itself is just a basic word game. It’s very simplistic,” Hasan said. “There’s not too much going on. You get eight letters at anytime and you just make a word out of it.”

Players can make any word, as long as they don’t repeat one already created, to earn points. There is a single-player and multi-player option, which connects users randomly via Facebook. To garner more than 5,000 players, Hasan advertised the game on Facebook and Google advertising and wrote to technology bloggers.

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“In creating the app, the biggest challenge was multi-player, making sure people get matched up correctly and their accounts are secure,” Hasan said. “I didn’t think it would be that hard. And also really getting the word out there is also kind of hard.”

Jerome Wiley, a senior majoring in engineering, met Hasan in electrical engineering classes and works with him on a team for the Capstone Design Project. Hasan asked Wiley to beta test the application’s multi-user format while it was in development.

“I just logged on to Facebook, my picture popped up and we began playing,” Wiley said. “The game was already working in single-player mode, so there wasn’t a difference in the way the game worked.”

To win the game, players must have the most points when all of the letters are exhausted. This challenges players to build words that earn more points than those of their opponent.

“Did I win? Of course,” Wiley said.

Hasan began coding a year ago and has developed several applications for Android, including a grade tracker and a paint color app that helps interior designers compare brands. He said the first step for him in creating an application is to write out all of its features and functions. He then draws what the app will look like and begins coding it.

“I just felt like, with technology changing as rapidly as it is, I wanted to be a part of that,” Hasan said. “And that’s what got me into app making. If I feel there’s a need for it, then I will try to fulfill it.”

Hasan considered changing majors to computer science, but decided to keep his work in software as a hobby to keep his interest active. After graduation in May, he will work for the Southern Company in Birmingham. He did note that he could see himself opening an app studio someday.

“Sometimes I ask myself. Maybe I should have majored in computer science, but then again, I’d taken a few CS classes, and it goes too deep in detail and that’d probably turn me off from all of this,” Hasan said. “I like that I’m not forced to work in it, though I wouldn’t mind making a living off of it.”

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