Final Project Submission MULT 4702

February 12, 2015

In Spring 2013, I began creating an app titled, "The Perfect Food." I wanted to create an app that allowed users to search for exactly what they were craving by narrowing down their options and therefore finding the "perfect food."

The app is similar to the popular app Yelp!, but is also different because it allows users to narrow down their choices by selecting any of the following:

• Sweet or Savory
• Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
• Cuisine
• Distance 

The app also lets users choose tags such as comfort, spicy, vegan, healthy, etc. For me, I always have a hard time deciding what and where I want to eat, and I feel this idea would make decision making a lot easier. The app also allows a user to skip ahead to results at any point during their decision making. 

Final PDF Presentation

Hope you enjoy the design, maybe one day someone (maybe me!) will create an app similar to this, helping everyone make their eating decisions a little easier! 

Happy eating!

Week 11: Interface #2 in Action!

So this is my first draft or design for the Perfect Food homepage. I really wanted liked the idea of the app being more visually appealing with polaroid pictures and that could be interactive for users. 

I am still playing with fonts and the white space of the polaroids, so let me know what you guys think! I am open to suggestions!

I am working with Steve to make sure my dimensions for the app and my icon are correct, and I am still playing around with some ideas. I'm thinking of maybe warping the polaroids so they look a little more realistic and not so straight-edge. Do you guys like the "munch munch" instead of a "let's get started?"

Steve is still working on the interface of the program and I am skyping with him tonight so we can update each other on our progress! 

Week 10: Phase 1 of Ultimate Super Awesome Perfect Food App

Steve and I have been keeping in touch through Skype and text to check in on each other's progress. 

From what he has told me, Steve has completed the framework for the app and will begin working on logic and programming this week. I don't know much about programming, but he seems very confident that we will be able to include all aspects of the app that are in my design. 

As far as my schedule, I have been working on the icon for the app. I think this might be the most challenging part for me, mainly because there's so many different designs I could go with, and I have to choose only one. I'm playing around with some different ideas as to what I want the app icon to look like, I have two ideas one that uses just text and another that is just an image. 

As I stated in my previous post, I am going in the direction of a "Polaroid" themed app, since my generation just loves taking pictures of their food. I think it would be cool if there was a way to make the pictures change every second or so to make it more fun and visually appealing to the user, but I need to check with Steve on that first. 

So for this week, I am starting to design the icon as well the polaroid design for the entire app. 

More to come soon! 

Week 10: Visual Interface and Less Visual Interface Designs

These are my sketches for my two alternating interface designs. The first interface is similar to my first Balsamiq design with a few changes, while the second one is a little more visually appealing and interactive. 


Interface #1:

My design for interface 1 is similar to my original Balsamiq design for The Perfect Food. My home page would have one image (for example, a taco) and then it would lead on to the following pages after confirming your current location. Instead of a boring rectangle button that allows the user to skip to results after the first page, I have replaced that design with a fun, interactive button instead. 

Interface #2:

 For my final project, I want to move in a direction that is similar to my second interface design. The home page would have various Polaroid pictures of food and the Polarid theme would continue throughout the app. One of the more annoying things that people do my age is take pictures of food, so I think having Polaroids is kind of a fun interactive take on that. It also gives the app more visual appeal and makes it fun to select different Polaroids. I'm still playing with this idea to make it as different from Yelp as possible and also making it fun and creative! 

Week 10: Sign On, Sign Off, Are You Sure You Want to Exit?

Sign On and Exit Guard

Many of the blogs I use most often have a signing on pattern and an exit guard pattern. This includes a variety of my favorite apps like Instagram, Yelp, Bejeweled, Pinterest, Temple Run, etc. According to 4ourth.com, sign on is the pattern that is used to confirm that only authorized individuals have access to the site, service, or application. Exiting guards are patterns that are used when exiting a screen, process or application that could potentially cause a loss of data or break in the session. 

Sign On

This was a screenshot I took of the login for my Pinterest account. But I use the sign on screen pattern for many of my apps including Instagram, Skype, Bank of America, Yelp, GooglePlus, etc. Most of the sign on patterns look extremely similar to this. 

Exit Guard Pattern

This is a screenshot of my bejeweled app, and this "Are you sure you want to exit?" is in most, if not all, my gaming apps. 

Week 9: Testing - If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Try Again!

Testing Ideas:

I can tell myself that no matter how good I think I did a project, or a speech, or a paper, it really comes down to when someone else looks over it. Some of the best advice and tips I've received have been when others proofread my papers or critique my projects and how I can improve. I think involving students to test mine and Steve's final project is the best way to improve our app. 

Since we're all extremely busy with our schedules, I think a good way to get feedback is through surveys. They are easy to put together and don't require too much time to complete. Steve and I could put together a survey to send out to students (or whoever) on what they think of our app! Questions could include:

• What navigation styles do you like best? (One page with a navigation scroll bar or separate pages)
• What (if any) social networks would you like to see included on the app?
• How much do you think this app should cost?
• How likely are you to use this app?
• What other suggestions or additions would you make to this app?

I think the survey would be a good way to start receiving feedback and testing our final product, and then for my second testing idea, we should conduct an in-person experiment for the app. We could take the information from the survey and then conduct an in-person experiment with some of the same people who took the survey, or completely new participants. Either way I think it's a great way to get feedback. I believe the best meeting place would be somewhere at HPU, possibly in one of the group study rooms in the library. Another option I thought of is getting my peers from this class to review our app, and vice versa. It's always nice to get a second programmer or designer's opinion.

Week 9: Displaying Information Through Grids & Infinite Areas

Display of Information:

For this assignment, the two patterns I chose from 4ourth Mobile wiki was the grid display and the infinite area display. I chose these because I find them visually appealing and will be using at least one of these display patterns for my final project with Steve. 

Grid Display:

The Grid Display is one of my favorite display patterns, it shows a set of selectable images that can fit in the available space. The images are all similar in size as well as aspect ratio, and you can display a small amount of additional information about each image as it becomes in focus. 

This is a screenshot I took of my home screen. It demonstrates the visual appear and accessibility to having a grid display. Each app or program is represented by a small icon and a title. 

Infinite Area Display:

The Infinite Area Display is most commonly used for maps, and it is found to be a good way to display other photographic information. The entire range of the data is generally available at every zoom level, and usually whatever the user is loading is a two dimensional graphic. In maps, zooming reveals more information generally with newly-rendered images. For example, at the city level you only see highways labeled but street names would appear the more you zoom in. This is because having street names displayed at a city level would not be useful and would be clutter inducing. 








This is a screenshot I took of my current location, all the way up north in Kahuku. For the shot I zoomed in at a city level, where only the major highway is displayed. But if I zoomed in, you would be able to see the surrounding streets and even icons that represent nearby businesses.