Bad Haptic Interface

- Heavy material.
- Clunky hanging off the side of your a laptop.
- No lock to keep the usb out.
- End of use still exposed.
- Chunky design wont allow for use in skinny spaces.
- Blocks USB ports next to it.

Good haptic interface

- lightweight material
- compact, small. (Does not include a hole for attaching to things to carry it around)
- Magnetic close cap
- simple, standard shape. Allows it to be used in all usb slots.

Assignment 2

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Work responsibilities in the group

We had pretty clear responsibilities within the group

Jess: Design
Arie: Visual research
Me: Linking and putting together

We met up at least once a week so that we could all give our ideas as we were working, but a lot of the design and linking was done individually at home, with communication through a facebook page.

Final Hand In and Critique

Hand in went great, we got mostly good feedback on our app. The only page that wasn't quite right was the list page, there was a problem with the way the list was arranged. Originally, we designed it in order of how far along the bar was, but because they are all on different time schedules, it looked confusing because the red one would still have heaps of time left because it was on a larger time scale.

We decided that arranging them according to the time left, listed on the right side of the bar, would be visually more clear. At a glance, you would still be able to see that milk is almost at the end point, but HB Pencil has jumped to the top because HB pencil has the least time left, and therefore is the most important right now. This is what the new layout would look like :

Finalising with the group.

3/04/14

I user tested the app on a family member this morning, because it was a whole new app, i thought it was necessary to user test again. The feedback was that the 'add new task' section needs to be clearer, and that was about it. Today we met up at uni to finalise the blog, thankfully all the changes were pretty minor, but it did take us most of the day. 



-We added a whole new settings section, that would have sliding bars to adjust the settings, but the bars are not functional because of restrictions from inDesign.  The 'notification range' bar adjusts how far away from a place you would have to be  to get a notification, this eliminates problems such as someone living in a rural area would need to set the scale higher, or someone with limited transport might put the scale lower.
The 'search words' bar allows you to change to amount of search words needed for the app to recognise an item and search its database.

-We changed the test entry box up the top to a more subtle, but still readable plus button. We did this because we wanted this page to be about the list itself, rather than having a big 'add new task at the top of the page.
We also added captions to the bars to give the scale a bit more readability, we also added small explanations of the scale at the bottom of the page.













-With the 'w' 'd' 'm' , they represent week, day and month. We thought about changing these to the whole word, but we liked the simplicity of it and we thought that once you had used the app, you would pretty quickly know what the letters stood for, especially with the addition above the bar that says 'select time frame'









Arie has a really good explanation of some of the other parts of our final app on his blog here -huttonarie.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/app-interface-stage-5-developing-new-design-recall/

Improved app.

2/4/14

This week Jess has really been working hard on the apps design, she just completed the whole design and sent it through to me so I can set up the links. I am so happy with how she designed it I think it looks really professional and clear.

We now have a landing page, a better way to keep track of your items and their deadlines , and more information available for the locations.

I am going to set up all the links for this tonight and we will meet up tomorrow to finish the app off.

User Testing

28/03/14

The user testing stage was really important for out group, we really benefited from having fresh eyes on our work. We changed quite a lot of things after the user testing, I don't thing that we really needed to make such huge changes, but the app was not going the way we we saw it going from the first week, so we decided to go back to the site mapping to clarify things further, while taking on board what people had said during testing.

The feedback that people gave was :

-People were getting confused with the setting of urgency, we needed to rethink how this feature was displayed. We wanted it to be included in the same motion as entering the new task to reduce the amount of clicks necessary, but i think we might just have to have it as a separate button to make it clearer for the user.

- Lines separating jobs were unclear, and the graphics changed mid way through the app. We knew this as we were kind of rushed to get it together before the presentation, and had some problems with exporting just before class. But the things pointed out by people were specifics, so its things that we will keep in mind when designing the final layout

-People couldn't be sure whether ‘m’ meant meters or minutes in the locations.

Image of feedback page :

We stayed after class to get our plan completely sorted for the week to come to get our new and improved version up to scratch.

Heres the new site map that we drew up and some notes :

Successful group meeting

Met with my group today and they were happy with how I had linked everything up, and they helped out with the things I was having trouble with. After we had made the app work exactly how we wanted, we started to look at other apps for inspiration on the look, and how to make it easier to navigate with the addition of aesthetics.



We also thought about the possibility of a progress bar, but we couldn't quite figure out how to make it work because our app goes back and forward a bit. I think it is a good idea to have one and we should add one in later on.


We also thought of the idea of having a loading screen when the app first opens, We thought the Snapchat opening screen was a great example. I'm not sure how we would make this work using InDesign, we might have to wait until class and ask some people there.

Problems with links.

This week in class we started creating our app. Arie couldn't make it so it was just me and Jessica. We decided that I would do the links and she would do the aesthetics.

At home when I started to link everything up, it was working well. There were a couple of things that wouldn't work properly, like check boxes. Hopefully my group can help out with that when we meet up on Thursday.
One thing that I think might be impossible on InDesign is taking what the user inputs into a text field ad displaying it later on, we will just have to simulate this.
Using InDesign meant we obviously had to drop all of our ideas to do with swiping, dragging and pinching, but I am sure we will make it work with just taps.

This is some of the stuff that we got done in class:


This is the stage that I got it to after class, and before our group meeting :
Obviously I was just getting the linking under way, not thinking about aesthetics yet

     

Concept to mock ups

16/03/14

Today our group decided on which interface to develop out of our individual ideas. We all had some good ideas but I think the one that we chose has the best potential for development.
-The idea was for a planning 'to-do list' app that allows the user to be notified when near a location that would help them achieve a activity on their list.
-The idea was pretty broad at the beginning but our group started to really work well together to create a concept that will work smoothly.
-We were coming up with some pretty far fetched ideas which would be great, but as we were looking at other list apps, the ones that worked well were the ones that were simple to use.
-We ended up with something that looks simple and works simply, but also is effective as a functioning interface.

-We drew up a site map of the app, this really helped clarify the steps and make sure that we were all on the same page.

-We then did a paper prototype, we didn't get a chance to test it out in class, but I have the papers with me so I will ask someone else to give it a go and see if they can work through it easy enough.
      

Case Study - Easy to use website

www.urbanoutfitters.com

Categories-

  -Easy drop down menu when you hover over a category with your mouse.

  -Simple, fewer catgories and more search refining

  -Many options for refining your search to exactly when you want, saves time.

   -QuickView option to view the item in more deatail, and then you can view it in more even more depth by clicking the item. 

  - Lots of information for every item

Checking out-

  -Quick, easy checkout. Clean and minimal layout