Creative Apps

1. Learning objectives

It is the new era of mobile and social computing. The super computers 20 years ago are now in our pockets, being connected all the time and everywhere. It is impossible for everyone to ignore these small computers in our everyday life, and it is impossible for industrial designers to ignore the design opportunities brought up by these small computers.

In this assignment we try to step into the business of mobile application design. We will be looking into the aspects of:

  1. GUI elements of mobile apps, such as style, patterns, building blocks.
  2. Object-oriented software structure, especially how GUI design can be decoupled from the functionalities.

We will also look beyond the device itself, bringing in the perspectives of:

  1. Mobile devices as social actors in a social network.
  2. Connectivity – connecting to other mobile devices and IO controllers, for example, Arduinos, to make use of sensors and actuators.

In this assignment we will be using Android as the experiment platform. An Android device such as a smart phone or tablet is required for joining this assignment.

2. Learning activities

We will try out a new way of learning: we will turn the classroom lectures and the homework tasks around -- you will be following lectures at home, and hands-on workshops in the classroom:

  1. Workshops. Most of the meeting hours will be utilized to run hands on workshops. Each workshop will be focusing on one of the learning objectives.
  2. Video lectures. Students are required to follow the video lectures offline, to learn certain concrete skills and knowledge to prepare for the workshops and the design challenges.
  3. Two design challenges, to be met and presented in week 3 and in week 6.
    • Week 3: An App used to track your competency development
    • Week 6: An App of your choice, but at least including 3 elements:
      1. Internet
      2. Arduino
      3. At least one sensor (camera, compass, GPS, etc) from the device.

3. Deliverables

Results of learning activity 3 and 6. For both results please deliver

  1. One ZIP archive, wrapping all the source code files and related data files together.
  2. One TXT file that
    1. includes a link to a YouTube video that demonstrates your work. The YouTube video shall be named as: <<<CreaApps 2012: <Title> by <your names> >>>

    2. explains briefly the ideas and concepts behind the video.

4. List of available reference and or background materials

will be available in the first week.

5. Information lecturer (assignor)

6. To work around this wiki

What is this wiki about?

Interesting starting points:

6.1. How to use this site

A Wiki is a collaborative site, anyone can contribute and share:

To learn more about what a WikiWikiWeb is, read about MoinMoin:WhyWikiWorks and the MoinMoin:WikiNature.

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