Different Designs

So, I will be working with Jeff for the final project. We'll be using his MyKicks app, which is kind of like an eBay-esque thing that allows users to buy and sell shoes. I did a Heuristic evaluation on the Balsamiq and the Jeff created the original Balsamiq.

The original Balsamiq had a Springboard-like menu to serve as the app's dashboard with nine icons.

• Profile
• Friends
• Marketplace
• Inbox
• Chat
• Requests
• News
• Trades
• Photos

He figured he wanted to simplify it even more to four icons, or even just four sections of the dashboard

• Profile
• Marketplace
• Inbox
• News

The dashboard as a SpringBoard could be easily kept, but, like suggested with my app instead of having screen that stops the user from getting immediate information, having one of the functions, probably the Marketplace or News open initially after sign in would be a more convenient choice. This eliminates a step in choosing the news feed.

Initiate Implementation

It's a bit late in the semester for me to be working on this... I originally had this blog entry first typed up on the 6th, but finals week took over and I never got to finish it.

IF I had the time to implement my app, going along with my When in the World app, I'd probably use Wikipedia to get facts. Although I was thinking about narrowing it down to Disney facts -- since I'm such a big Disney buff and former employee of the company. It would narrow down information by A LOT. But then I think I would run into copyright infringement problems or something, not that any of it is intentional. Another concern could be how/where to gather facts and would there be enough for every single day of the year. Would it only be movies? Or include the parks? etc. etc.

Then I would first figure out the basic layout of the app the first week. It's probably going to have 4 (or 5? 4.5?) basic screens

• General fact screen
• Change Date screen
• Only movie/studio fact screen
• Only park fact screen
• Share screen (or pop up)

Week two would consist of creating graphics for those screens. 

Week three and four would be gathering information. (as much as I could)

Five would be testing while week six would be correcting and tweaking final touches.

Again I actually don't have this time, so everything here is hypothetical.

Classifying Components

4ourth Mobile created an article based patterns used to Display Information and out assignment this week was to blog about two of those patterns.

Vertical List

This is a screenshot from the Android version of the Starbucks app as shown on my Droid 4. It features a vertical list, specifically a thumbnail list since it has thumbnails of each card that's a part of the user's account with accompanying data that shoes the amount in the card, name of the card and last 4-digits (blurred), as well as the date it was last used. The icon to the right of the data allows the user to change the order of cards by holding and dragging their selection up or down.

Grid

This screenshot features the Friends list for the LINE PLAY app and it uses a grid pattern to display players' avatars along with usernames labeling each one. It scrolls vertically and is arranged alphabetically by username. Small icons show if they're new friends (small red circle with 'N') and whether or not they're official avatars (owned/promoted by company; not shown). Clicking on an avatar brings up a Popup menu that features the full avatar and choices for the user to interact with their friends.

I wanted to add these screenshots to the 4ourth mobile wiki, but unfortunately I can't figure out the TextCha answer, or the network would time out.