MDDN 352, Project 3, Reflection

This project I would actually say has been one of my favorites  App development is something I wouldn't mind getting into in the future, and learning java script will definitely help me if i am to look down  that line of work. As for the group for this project I thought that we all worked really well together and I wouldn't mind working with them again. We all managed to keep on each others good side and always respected each others work which is something I am really grateful for.

As for going further with this app. Joss and I want to enter this in that competition that the department of conservation are doing. If we do enter it though we are going to have to change several things with the sever. Especially make it that you can access it outside of the university. Joss also wants to work on the art again. I dont really see much more that he can do on it but I asked him to try and keep the same layout.

I put our video on vimeo and I have already got comments from people asking how they can download it as it is something which they say they would use. As a designer this is the best thing to hear, knowing that people actually like your work and what to get it feels amazing. So hopefully once we complete it fully we can upload it to the google + store and maybe even itunes if we figure out how to do that. Im not sure if it is going to be a problem if we also use this app in that competition but I will ask Kah once we get it all finalized.

So overal I would rate this project a success and I am really proud of the outcome and hope that everyone else enjoys it if we end up realeasing it.

MDDN 352, Project 3, Final Presentations

We just had our final presentation and it actually went really well. We started off by telling the audience about the app and who we were. From then we went straight in to showing them the video which Joss and I made which shows the usefulness of our app.

Check-It App video from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.
We believe that this video shows a lot about the app and shows how useful it actually is. From then we gave the tutors each a phone which had the app on it as well as some products (some which were on the database and some that weren't) for them to scan and test out the app for themselves.  The feedback we got from our app was very good and we are all really proud of it. Along with the video we also had to hand in a poster which we made for a competition  which we are actually thinking of entering. The poster is A1 so I apologize if you cannot see it on this blog.

Also like MDDN 343 we had to write an individual report saying what we did on the app.

Here are also some screen shots of the app in use and showing some parts of it

MDDN 352, Project 3, ANOTHER NEW LAYOUT!!!!!!!!!

So this app is due in a couple days. It was about 90% done and there were only a couple of small touches which we needed to do and most of them were from the server side. And then Joss decided to do ANOTHER layout. This time it is a lot different than the old ones. He realized that we had sort of gone off track with us wanting to have everything easily accessible. We showed our app to Ben Jack and he said that he thinks it would be a lot nicer if we had only 2 buttons per page. So that is what we did.

For this new layout we made a new button called recycling. This button goes onto another page which is where all the things that the user needs for the recycling part of the app is.

The about button goes to a page where it give information about the app itself. Originally we wanted there to be several sets of data on that page

• Number of Scans personally
• Number of Overall Scans
• Number of Recycling bins taged personally
• Total number of bins taged
• and the most recycled type of product.

We weren't able to implement the personal onces because that is data which we have to set with the phone and we would have to use caching to be able for it to save that information. We almost got it working but we ran out of time so we decided to take it out.

The other 3 are in the app though and are working properly

Well back to the main screen and when the user presses the Recycle button it takes them to this page.

From this page everything is pretty much the same. The only difference is that on the page where you either get a successful scan, this is where you find the database button. We wanted to add it in there because it gives the user a little extra bonus which you can only get once you have scanned and recycled a product.

Adding this new layout was kind of annoying as it means that there was a lot of our java code which wasn't being used and was making the app slow. It took a bit of time to get rid of all the unnecessary  code but I eventually got it out. After this most of the app is done and all that we need now is to make the video and prepare for our final presentation

MDDN 352, Project 3, another new layout, Dropdown menu and Scroller

So Joss has once again decided on a new layout. I did tell him that if we were to get it done at least a couple days before hand in that I would put it in. So well yeah thats what I did.

This layout is almost of linear and even though it was quite annoying to implement I do have to admit that it looks good. Everything works exactly the same as it did before. Something which we also decided on is that on the top of our page instead of just having a white line separate the logo from the rest of the page we are now going to have a filled bar. The colour of this bar is a slight grey which is also what we are now using for all the image and text colours to keep it consistant.

Something which we found out from when we were doing some user testing is that some people didn't really like was that if they scanned a product which wasn't in our database that it would just say that the products not found. So what I came up with is that we should have a choice for the user to input their own data on products that weren't found.

So what happens is that if a scan is successful it will go to this page.

At the moment all that is on this page it the barcode of the product and some information about it. Also if you press the database button then it will go to the database page (which I will talk about more later in this post) and the page which it goes to will be depended on what type of product is scanned. The way which we did this is the same way in which the indented image is being chosen when a button is pressed. And of course if the user was going to recycle that product then they would press the recycle button at the bottom of the screen. When that happens a little bit of text pops up saying thank you for recycling.

But if there isnt a product on the server then it will go to this page.

Originally we had a grey boarder around all the text throughout the app but when we got all of the pages together I decided to take it out and keep it on a green background. Well on this page what happens is that if you press the button where it says aluminum it will pop this up.

Here you chose what category that this item that you just scanned goes under. Once you have done this once again you press the recycling button and some text will pop up saying 'successfully added onto our server' It also changed pages to the page where a product was successfully added.
At the moment the drop down menu doesn't even look like a menu so that is something which I want to sort out before final hand in which is coming really close.

Now what happens when you press the database button is that you go onto a page which gives you some interesting facts about the products which you are about to recycle. Here are two of the facts which we have in our list.

Having a drop down menu took me quite awhile to implement but when I got it I realized that it was actually something really simple. First what I had to do was make and array named 'type of products' and then make an array list named which had the names of what I wanted in the drop down menu.
Something which got he held up for quite some of it was that in eclipse a drop down menu is called a 'Spinner' this was really confusing but once I figured that out it was actually quite easy. In the spinner there is an id called entires and prompt which. Entries is where the 4 choices are and prompt is where that first array name goes. So all I had to do was reference those arrays in those 2 places and it worked.
I was quite embarrassed about how easy it actually was to do after I got it working.

We have at least 6 different facts like that for each of our 4 types of recyclable products. To show these facts what I have put in is a horizontal slider. So all the user needs to do is swipe there finger across the screen to show all the other facts which are there on the page. A couple of the other guys in the groups said that I should get rid of the grey boarder around the facts. But me and Martin decided it would be good to keep it in as it shows the user that it is different than the rest of the app. While your swiping it also shows a small grey tab which shows you how far along the facts you are.

Doing the Scroller was actually a lot harder than I thought that it would. Something which made it extremely hard was that all the images weren't all the same size so I had to go back and export them all again with the right sizes that I wanted. Once they were all the same size it was a lot easier. In eclipse there is something called a horizontal scroller and all I did was add a horizontal linear layout within that scroller and had all the images in that linear layout.

Something which is also happening on that page is that under where it says 'Aluminium Recycling Facts' it will tell you how many Aluminium products have been scanned in the past

MDDN 352, Project 3. New layout and user feedback

So coming from the beta presentation we have actually changed several of our icons and most of the pages have been put in.

Over the past week I havent been able to do much work on the app because I have had hands in for MDDN 314 as well as MDDN 343. But now that both of those projects are all done and dusted I can focus all of my time on making this app work and look good.

The networking students have done some stuff to the server so that most of the information which we need is going to be ready for us to put in.

So here is the new layout which we have got into eclipse and everything is working perfectly fine at the moment.

This actually looks a lot better than the original and it definitely tells the user that it has something to do with recycling. Even though we all like this layout and we have also implemented indenting when the button is held down, Joss still doesn't like the look of the app and wants to change the icons again. At this stage we only have a week to go and if he keeps making changes like this than we just cant have them in. There is a lot of code which is depending on the size of the images as well as the layout so it wont be a easy fix to just change the image. I have decided that if he wants to make new icons again then he can but he has to get them done by at least 2 days before hand in so I can make sure that these changes dont effect anything else in a bad way.

The vibrating has been put in and whenever the users finger leaves the screen when they push a button than it will vibrate for 1 second. It wasn't that hard to implement. I had to make it that the vibrator had permission to be used in the app and then just set a vibrator variable when the page is created. Along with that I just had to set when the vibrate will go off in the java. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.
We also found out that not everybody likes it when the vibrator goes off so we have decided to make the user be able to turn it on and off if they wish. To do that we overrode the actually button on all android phones which you use when you want to see other options. Here we but the choice to turn the vibrating on and off and if we have time we are also going to add sound onto that as well.

One thing which we are all quite confused about it what actually happens when the about or database button is pressed. There has been quite abit of confusion with if they are both actually the same thing. When Joss first pitched us the idea what he was saying is that the about screen goes to a page which tells you some stats about the actual app, like how many times have this app been downloaded, or how many scans have there been. The database button will go to a page which tells you about the information about the products which were scanned.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Reflection

This assignment was quite a challenge for me. There were ups and downs during the times which I had with my groups. There were times where we would get really frustrated with one another. But in the end we managed to all put our differences aside and finish the game. In the end I do think the game turned out well. At the beginning it was a real challenge for Francis and I to get things done in time since we were down one designer for a lot of the assignment. But once we all got together we managed to get a lot of work done. It truly does show that 3 is better than 1 or 2.

We had to do an individual write up about the main things which we have done for this project so here is my personal write up.



If I were to do this assignment again there would be several things which I probably would of changed if I were to make all of the design Decisions myself

1. I would change the game to a 3rd person runner like temple run
2. I probably wouldnt have had a story driven game and just make it a time and distance based game
3. I also would have made the puzzles suit the runner type of game I wanted and just kept it to dodge, jump and also phase into the other screen.

There are probably a few other things which I would of changed but I cant really think of any off the top of my head right now.

But overall I think that it all turned out well. From what I heard from people who have played the game, they liked it and as a game designer that is all I can hope for with the outcome.

Now its time to work on Charge 2.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MDDN 352, Project 3, Boarders and Tags

Something which I want to do in this app is to give a boarder to all of the main things in the app.

This was actually really hard and frustrating to try and get this to work like it shows above. In eclipse there isn't a simple add boarder button like there is in flash builder. What I had to do was whenever I wanted to make a boarder I had to make a new layout within the existing relative layout. In that new layout I made the background grey. And within that I made a text view which I set a background colour to green and the text colour grey. At the time when I did this the text views width and height were 'wrap_content' which means that it will always take the shape of what ever is in that text view, so if I add more lines of text it will always get bigger but will also perfectly fit in the box. Now to get the boarder I made a 2dp margin around the text view. This then showed some of the layout which the text view is in, thus giving the impression that there is a boarder. This was actually really annoying to get working as it took me awhile to figure out that way of doing it.

Another thing which we want for our app is to be able to tag recycling bins. And something which Kah told us in our beta presentation that it could be cool to say weather the bin is for glass, plastic etc. We have managed to get that implemented and gives you the opinion of which one you want to tag. At the moment when you tag it just shows a little flag but what we want to do is have different flags for the different types of recycling bin. This will help other users know what type of bin there is around them so they know which is the one that they need to go to. Apparently this isn't that hard to put in and id assume it would be the same way as our indented images.