Creating an Application - 23rd March

Wednesday 23rd March 2016                        Creating an Application                     Lecturer: Maz

Evaluation - Creating a Web or Mobile Application 

Throughout this module I have felt fully engaged with the lessons, I have been participating within class discussions and have evidenced my own independent research throughout the lead up to the production for my application, using my blog to showcase ideas, methods, pictures etc. The lecturer was at hand for the complications that arose during the production process but I mostly overcame the problems myself, in doing so I learnt new techniques of how to use Adobe Captivate, I decided to refresh my mind with the brief a lot so that I had a clear understanding of the requirements for submission, ways I could go about my work to create an experimental application, I am optimistic about developing this further in the future to make my creation compatible with different platforms like IO's and Windows

I found the first 4 lessons really interesting as we were provided with basic information, taught through various tutorials that the lecturer was running, repeating some of the steps week on week to make sure we had an understanding of how to go about making our app, some of the possibilities that we could offer the user i.e. Geo tagging, interactive buttons, information icons, swipes, slides, clicks for advanced actions etc. I feel like these sessions helped myself to gain an understanding towards any basic functions that I could implement into the application that I am creating.

By the first lesson I had already created a brief for my chosen application which I handed to the lecturer in a print format, he had a glance and started to go through the functions that I had written down, started to develop an understanding of what could be possible in such a short time period of 10 weeks. Further information on my initial idea and feedback can be found here http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/creating-app-design-9th-march.html.

Once I had developed a separate idea I set out for the next 2 weeks to complete my research for the application so that I could make a start on the layout as I felt like time was running out, wanted to follow the running schedule that I had planned week by week and achieve the goals that I had set myself. My research consisted of existing applications, colors, layouts, functions, shapes, target audience, orientation (portrait/landscape), time, advanced buttons etc.

I have managed to develop and create a concrete idea for the "Creating a Web or Mobile application" module for my complimentary studies. I have looked into the aesthetics for similar apps within the google play store, as my application will be primarily designed for my phone, LG Nexus 5, Android. My independent research helped to give my app a specific style, inspired from lots of different concepts that I have looked at which I have evidenced on my blog. My second idea was to create an application that would function as a data collector, the user will be able to fill in a data form, the forms data will be collected and submitted once the user clicks the button at the bottom of the interface "SUBMIT", the idea came into my head through working with the B.T.O (British Trust of Ornithology", I liked the way that they have a program which can record data and I thought that perhaps I could create something similar. On clicking the button I have created a primary email for the form to be sent to, this has been manually set and tested on multiple occasions. Further information about my field of research, ideas generation and analysis of similar apps can be found here http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/creating-app-design-9th-march.html.

My chosen color and layout was based around the website for South West Peregrine ttp://southwestperegrine.org.uk/.  that I have helped to create, I wanted to keep the application that I was creating for the group as similar to the website as possible, once I had created the application I started to publish and upload my app to phone-gap so that I could view and test it on my chosen device, this was made possible by uploading a zip file onto phone-gap, changing the config and res files to make sure that my chosen logo would show up for the application icon, once uploaded I was able to scan the QR code. Whilst in the app I noticed that the logos and buttons has somehow been re-sized, thought it could have something to do with the fact that I was creating a responsive project, I had noticed that the submit button wasn't showing either so I had to repeat the zipping and uploading process about 10-20 times so that everything was view-able (changed the logo) and fully functioning. One of the logos still wasn't working as the bird's beak was merging with the background color, I had to re-upload the logo and position it into captivate as well as overwriting all of the PSD files in the res folder in order for the logo to be correct, another small error that occurred was the play button at the start of the app, I went into the Java script and got rid of the flash notes, so now the application loads up and goes straight into the app which makes it so much quicker and looks professional.

If I was to make this application again I would like to have a logo at the start of the app, I may like to add more links from the website and could play with the idea of Geo tagging to show each group member which site that the data had been collected at. However, I decided not to do this as I felt like anyone could work out the sites of where Peregrine Falcons are located throughout Devon and Cornwall which wouldn't be good as people could do some harm to the population, thinking about this for further development of my application. Perhaps used a bit more time for research, I was following my running order schedule for week on week which can be found here http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/creating-application-16th-march.html.

Overall I feel like I have managed to create a user friendly application for my users to function with, I have added the little extras such as the group's website and a twitter, despite the twitter linking to the group's homepage, you will have to create a twitter and sign in of course to follow the group and catch up with the latest news that is taking place i.e. presentations, talks, data etc. I really like the colors, they stand out, the positioning of the text and logo are in keeping with the website which is what I initially had planned, I like the way that I have set the app to landscape because this gives the front page and the form a really nice feel, everything is spaced out. However, at the start I did set the application for view on portrait but the submit button wasn't showing, once I had fixed that, all the information on the screen was bunched together and it just looked tatty, plus I still wanted my application to be easy to read, easy to function and I wanted the overall product to stand out.

Here is a link to all of my blog-posts for this module http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Creating%20an%20App%20for%20IPad this was definitely an interesting module and I feel as if I have created a satisfying application that can now be put to use for collecting and recording data at anonymous sites.