Week 7: Visual & Information Design

Scraps Article:

I chose to visit the blog, http://beautifulpixels.com/ and read an article about an app called, Scraps.

Scraps is an app for iPhone that makes it easy for users to quickly save thoughts that one might otherwise dismiss and forget the thought forever. The app allows you to easily save your thoughts with just a few swipes of your finger. I think I would find this app useful because like most people, I come across random thoughts throughout the day and can't remember them later on. 

I really enjoyed reading the article, and I think it also followed the anatomy of effective blogging, including the five blog components as well as the simple rules to follow when writing a blog. 

The author clearly explained his thoughts on the app after clarifying to his audience the purpose of Scraps, which I thought was very well said and he made good points. It was also short enough where I could read the whole thing and not feel myself trailing off or becoming bored.

Peer Evaluation:

Martin Watts Balsamiq Evaluation

1) I think having a social media outlet from the Joke Around app would be very appealing to users. Users could have the option to share jokes with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Rating: 3

2) There should be an option to cancel every time you submit a joke, just in case you misspell something or aren't ready to commit to the joke you're about to submit to the server 

Rating: 5

*made comments in the video, this is definitely something the app should have

3) I'm hoping that the finished product will have more color, more of an appealing design. I think his draft was great, very straightforward but I would have just liked to see more color and appeal visually

Rating: 3

4) Martin mentioned that ideally, he would like for his app to have jokes submitted by people using the app, but in the beginning, he will only be using jokes from outside sources that he finds. Maybe there could be an option to view original jokes submitted by viewers and another option to submit common jokes from the internet. 

Rating: 2

*It's not that important but I feel like I read the same jokes online so it would be nice to have a feature where you could see original jokes created by your users. 

Here is the link to Martin's review of my Balsamiq

App Evaluation:

Menu Pages is an app that allows users to search from over 30,000 restaurants in select cities where you can view the entire menu as well as other information. I actually used menupages.com almost every day when I lived in NYC, it was extremely helpful for finding the perfect food! 

In the app, you can search by district, cuisine, price, features, and more! The only problem I had with this app is that it's only for major cities on the mainland like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. 

Pros:

• similar to how my app would be set up, where you could search what's nearby or narrow down your results 
• very accurate results and accommodating to users

Cons:

• only available for select cities 
• not crazy about the home page design

Ness is an app that allows users to find new restaurants based on your ratings of other restaurants and gives you personal reccomendations on where to eat. It's similar to how Netflix or Pandora works when they're trying to find the perfect song or perfect movie for you.

It almost acts as another social media outlet because you create a profile, find friends on Ness, have followers, and build information on your profile. I'm not sure if I like this because how does this make this app stand out? 

Pros:

• sleek and modern design that is very appealing visually 
• finds restaurants based on personal preference of other restaurants 
• it's free 

Cons:

• social media aspect, it doesn't make the app stand out

Navigation Bars:

1) Gallery- gallery navigation bars are my favorite kind of navigation. It's very appealing visually to the eye and if you do it right, users are able to navigate your site or app based on the pictures you choose. Gallery navigation could also be interactive, like maybe the picture changes when clicked.

2) Springboard- I think springboard navigation is fun overall and makes it interactive for the user. Similar to gallery, each page is represented by an icon that the programmer designs. While there are universal icons for home and messages, it allows the programmer to think outside the box and get creative!

3) Metaphor- the metaphor navigation is very exciting visually, by using an object related to the app and connects it to the main menu. This can get tricky though because you have to choose the right metaphor so users know what it represents. 

Week 6: Balsamiq

This week I designed my first app using the toolkit provided by Balsamiq. The changes I made to my prototype are as follows:

1) buttons for categories could be lists to allow scrolling up and down 

2) there was a lot of screens before actually getting to a list of restaurants, so there's always an option at the top of the screen that allows users to jump to results instead of putting in extra information.

Here's my design so far! Let me know what you guys think!

The Perfect Food App by

Week 4: Prototypes and Storyboards

Point of View

As I stated in my first blog post for this class, I love to eat. I don't think you can ever have enough apps about food, which is why I want to create the perfect food app. In fact, I might even name it, "The Perfect Food." 


While I have a lot of apps on my phone that help me find places to eat, or look up nutrition for restaurants, and even have a Dairy Queen locator, I still seem to always have trouble finding exactly what I'm craving. 

Storyboard:

As I said, even though I have Yelp and other great food apps, I often feel like I'm settling for less when I'm just picking the location that's closest to me. Take Yelp for example, you can type in "food," "mexican," and "restaurants," and it usually gives you a lot of options, which is no bueno if you're as indecisive as I am.


 I want an app where I can select what kind of mood I'm in for food, how close I want it to be, whether it's grab and go, whether I want sweet or savory, etc. I want an app that can narrow down selections for "the perfect food." So this is what happens on a daily basis for me pretty much:

         

And here is what I'd like to happen instead:

            

Prototypes:


So moving forward with "The Perfect Food", I designed my first prototype below. 

Model 1:

    

 

               
       

 
   
                                                    

Model 2:

Model 2 is basically the same as model 1 but I've added two new pages: distance willing to travel and what kind of mood the user is in.

             

Video Demonstration:

My app in action! Sorry about the sound in the beginning guys! It's just my AC that's really loud :) 

Week 3: Needfinding

Observations 
At my internship, there's always a lot of hectic activity whether it's at the station or even when I'm out in the field. Regardless, I thought it would be a great opportunity to record some situations I find myself in that can be hectic at times, and find an opportunity to make those times less hectic and make the experience easier. 

Cigarette Butt Beach Clean Up

Last week my cameraman and I went out to Waikiki beach to observe an effort to clean up all the cigarette butts on the beach. The process was amazing and the results were mind-boggling, and it definitely gave me a lot of inspiration for media involvement. 

Successes:

• picked up thousands of cigarette butts 
• picked up other garbage
• worked together as a team 

Breakdowns:

• took a long time for volunteers to go through the trash
• very time consuming to organize the different kinds of trash; plastic, cans, cigarette butts, etc. 
• some of the volunteers got distracted 
• everything was hand written and calculated
• possible cause for errors in calculations 

Opportunities:

• organizing and counting trash in a more efficient way
• using some kind of technology to leave no room for errors 

Forever Roses at HCC

For Valentines Day, students at HCC build "forever roses" that are hand made out of copper and sheet metal. Every year they are extremely popular and sell out very quickly. 

Successes:

• made hundreds of roses by hand 
• worked together as a team 
• used recycled sheet metal and copper 

Breakdowns:

• very time consuming
• sold out of roses too quickly; not every student who wanted a rose got one 
• director said sheet metal and copper was too expensive to make more roses 
• didn't have an estimate of how many students would buy roses and therefore didn't have enough for everyone

Opportunities:

• have some sort of "waiting list" in advance so they can know an estimate of how many roses to make 
• more students to volunteer to build more roses 
• use the money that is raised for the roses to buy more metal for more roses next year 

Brainstorming 

1. Volunteers at the Waikiki Beach effort needed a more effective and efficient way of picking up the cigarette butts. 
2. Could develop an app that lets users know all the dangers of smoking cigarettes. 
3. An app that could encourage people to quit smoking and therefore hopefully result in less cigarette butts on the beach. 
4. An app that would be similar to Exel, where volunteers could then average and add the numbers of total trash picked up in each category. 
5. A forever rose app, kind of like the girl scout cookies app where it's a countdown to how many days are left until you can buy forever roses 
6. Also could develop an app that allows students to be on a waiting list guaranteeing them a forever rose on the day. 
7. Other ways to celebrate valentines day- an app that could be all about DIY valentines gifts that last longer than flowers or chocolate. 
8. If the forever roses are so popular, why not have other fundraising events throughout the year to help raise money for more metal for more roses?
9. An app that could make people aware of how they can help clean up their community. 
10. An app that could list beach clean up events according to your area 
11. An app where you take a picture of something, and it estimates how many there are in the picture. Example: taking a picture of all the cigarette butts and the app tries to calculate exactly how many there are. 
12. Instead of sending the trash that was picked up to another landfill, find a way to reuse it. 
13. An app that could tell you all the different ways to recycle certain items in different ways. 

Inspiration

1. I really like the GirlScout Cookie app, find cookies. You can use the locator to determine when and where Girl Scout cookies will be sold. I like this for the forever rose aspect, except it would be more of a countdown of when the roses would be sold, but they could also start selling them at various locations other than HCC. 
2. Draw Something, this app gives me good inspiration for possibly submitting designs to request a custom rose. People could draw their designs on their phones using the app and then would receive a rose based on the one they drew. You could also have the option to share it with your friends. 
3. iPhone calendar for beach clean up events. For this one, you could input your current location and a month to month calendar would show up with certain dates highlighting beach clean up days. 
4. SnapChat is a good inspiration for a fictional app called, "how many?" or something like that. You can take a picture of something and the app will determine how many of that item there are. 
5. Clorox my Stain. Another great app. This is my inspiration for telling users how to recycle different items in different ways. You could select what you wanted to recycle and the app would list DIY projects using the recycled item.

Brainstorming Brilliant Ideas

So for my brainstormed ideas, I came up with the following apps to help cure boredom while standing in line:

• Build an aquarium
• Fact or Fiction
• Fun Facts
• Hiking Trails 
• Cheap Eats 
• Joke Generator 
• Workout Routine 
• News
• Paint your face
• Find the difference in pictures
• Build your own cartoon
• Cookie recipes
• Listen to music 
• Find Waldo
• Slingshot app
• Test your hearing 
• Build a room
• Homework organizer
• Photo editor 

Favorites:

My two favorites would be building an aquarium and maybe cheap eats. I also really liked fun facts too but for now I'll just narrow it down to the first two. As I said in my first blog, I love to eat, so an app that tells me where I can go to get good cheap food that's not chips or McDonalds I'm sold. If I was bored standing in line I would definitely be planning where I could go grab a snack after I was done standing in line. 

I also think it would be entertaining to build your own aquarium. The app would have different pre designed tanks with fish and decorations to choose from.

Build Your Own Aquarium:

Home Page

Users start by choosing what type of tank they want

After selecting what kind of fish you want, you can choose a
name and put him in your tank 

Here is a rough sketch of what a tank might
look like. Each fish have needs that are
happiness, hunger, and fun level.
Users have to make sure their fish's needs are
taken care of by feeding and playing with
each fish. You also have to keep the tank clean.

Cheap Eats:
               

Home Page

The first thing the app needs to do is determine
your location. Users can either entire their city, state
and zip manually or the GPS can do it for them.

Users can start by selecting whether they want
breakfast, lunch, dinner, or just a snack. Then
user type in different tags for what they're craving.
This allows the computer to narrow down certain
restaurants according to the user's needs. Or if the user
doesn't want to enter tags, they can just simply
see what food places are near them.

Here the program will give users different
restaurant options according to the tags
 they entered or  what is nearby.

Feedback:
I asked my boyfriend if he would look over my aquarium app, mainly because he gets as bored as I do and just as easily. He really liked the idea of being able to build your own aquarium. He also suggested that instead of a pirate or pink tank I do Ocean tanks, lake tanks, fresh water tanks, tropical reef, etc. He also said there should have some sort of goal when playing the game, that maybe you could raise the fish to sell them to earn coins and then you're able to buy bigger fish, prettier scenes, etc. He also said that instead of selling them you could breed the fish to make cool hybrids, which I liked that idea. I think it might be cool to do a combination of the two, maybe breed the fish to make cool hybrids and then sell them to see how much they are worth. 

His feedback really helped me a lot. I think people might get bored just building an aquarium and having no goal or purpose. So I think by incorporating those ideas, it would be a really cool app for people to play with! 

Excited for MULT 4702!

Hi Guys!

Sorry for the delay in posting my blog, but before I get started talking about the BORING DEFAULT OPTION about why I'm taking this class, allow me to tell you a little about myself. 

I'm 23 years old and live in Kahuku on the North Shore with my mom and three dogs. I've been in Hawaii for about four and a half years now and I'm finally graduating in May! I'm definitely really excited about that. When I'm not doing schoolwork, I love just going to the beach and hanging out (original, I know). But I also love to surf, read, bake, draw, paint, and most of all, eat. I think that so much of my day is keeping myself distracted until it's time to eat again. I'm pretty positive I could eat tacos and cookies every day and never get sick of them.  

But enough about me. I'm taking MULT 4702 because while it is required for my major, I think it will be one of the most important classes I will ever take at HPU. In this day and age, mobile is everywhere. You can look up anything within seconds with just a few swipes and taps of your fingers. Anywhere you look everything is adapting to mobile design. News, TV, movies, games, music, radio, and more is becoming mobile friendly for people who are using iPhones, Droids, iPads, etc. Mobile is today, tomorrow, and it's not going away any time soon. 

I'm really excited to learn more about mobile design so I too, can be part of this evolving and growing aspect of society. Good luck to everyone in the class! Can't wait to start learning!