Issues...

Over the weekend, Nicky went through a bunch of ANE tutorials and narrowed it down to one which we think we can use.  We had a read through and thought it sounded straightforward enough.

WE WERE WRONG!

Nicky and I spent an entire day trying to get the push notifications working with the native extensions, we needed an updated SDK (as 3.1 is not up to date enough for the ane), and new certificates and it STILL won’t work.

Hours of work and lots of errors later we decided to call it a night

On the plus side – Ben’s going well with the design and has managed to get css styling sheets working

For Monday

Had a chat to Kah post-presentation in regards to notifications.
We don’t have a lot of control over how notifications appear on an iPhone on the lock screen and will have to stick with the standard apple blue bubble. We thought the best way to incorporate notifications with our design would be to show the basic notification (hopefully with an ignore button and a view button) and when the phone is unlocked, have it direct to the app which will show our notification – the design and interface we want.

Nicky and I have been looking into Native Extensions and now it's time to get coding. Ben is going to continue working on the design which we will later integrate with our flash-builder code.

Different Types of Students

Notice how the design student is the worst

Good Student

Average Student

Bad Student

Survey

We decided it would be a good idea to do a survey of people's study habit to make sure there is a need for our app and what things we should be focus on.

Most people thought they had very average study habits and only occasionally take breaks away from their computers.

The worst stats came from the questions regarding meals.

We're very glad we did the survey because it showed there is need for our app. The basic idea around it that usually someone will sit at their computer struggling to get something finished and will only take a break once the task is complete unless someone else suggests a break. Unfortunately when everyone is busy and stressed there is no one there to make this suggestion. Our app aims to be the voice of reason which says 'hey take a break you feel much better and be a lot more productive after some rest'

MOSCOW

Must Have

- Notification Break System
- Goals List
- Settings (naggyness, silent mode)

Should Have
- Links to Weather
- Snooze function
- Help Page

Could Have
- Gps Location (for notifications)
- Rewards System
- Blocking of other apps / internet / do not disturb mode

Won’t Have
- Connection with friends to coordinate breaks (Scope)
- Anything distracting (such as countdowns)

Rough Timeline

Oct4

Base Code
More Defined Design
Defined App Model (based partially off survey results)

Oct 11
Basic App Functions working
Started User Testing

Oct 18
Edited Layouts from user testing (if need be) – design done
Majority of App coded

Oct 25
Almost everything done – slight troubleshooting
User Testing Complete
Video Creation

Roles

Ben – Design, UI
Nicky – Research, Flashbuilder Coding
Emily – Flashbuilder Coding, Editing design to fit coding

All = User Testing

Notification Settings

Rather than allowing people to set how often breaks are (as that kind of defeats the purpose) we thought we’d have settings as to how busy you are. If you are not busy, the breaks would be more frequent to keep you health and well being at a maximum but when you are really busy, they would be limited a bit more. Such as a shorter lunch break.

According to research your are only supposed to spend 6 hours a day at a computer. While this is probably the best thing you can do for your health it is not a realistic approach for students. We understand that student do need to spend long hour working hard but the aim of our app is to make these long hours healthier. It's not about reducing work hour but about maximising the productivity during these hours and creating less stressful and happier work habits

Sound Settings
We really wanted to have sound but this is not practical if you’re using the app at uni which it is intended for.
So we though of a couple of settings
Either you could change the volume and vibrate, or you could tell it where you are, ie home or uni. Home would have noise, use would vibrate, and maybe a silent mode also.

Initial Concepts

In our team Ben have take on the role of lead graphic designer will Nicky and I are going to focus more on the research and coding side of the app.

He showed us two concepts based on the zen theme.

The are two of the themes Ben came up with. I think the first one is take the zen theme a little too literal and I'm not a huge fan of the realistic rock and sand aesthetic. However I really like the second theme! I think its simple yet interesting and is pretty exactly what I had in mind when the zen idea was suggested. 

Zen Theme

As our app is amid at mental health and wellbeing we want to create a relaxing theme. The idea our of Zen was suggested

Group Notes

- notifications need to not be naggy

– could incorporate humor?

– potential to chose the personality (emily’s american alter ego)

- create goal system in a list with check boxes

– tick of check boxes at end of day

– all completed = reward

– uncompleted = roll over to next day

– importance system

- use iPad and iPhone?

- auto update/sync with each other?

**Focused on improving work habits by reducing stress and increasing productivity**

Style

- zen (need to convince Kah – perhaps an abstract take?)

- clear, simple, clean, minimal, not distracting

Survey the class to find out

- how often they take breaks

- would this help them?

Run as a background App

- would need a stop function to turn off

- a clear function for the goals (ie if you open after holidays so you don’t have to delete one by one)

Is It Important

We decided to make a list of all the things we wanted in our app and decide how important and how difficult they would be. Things with a very hard difficulty rating and which were of low importance were scraped. This helped to give us a better idea of what we wanted the app to be and how hard it would to achieve the different scopes

Better Work Habits

We have decided to go ahead with the health and well being app aimed as student study habit. That main reason for this is because it concerns a large majority (if not all of us) in this class. It would also help prevent injury such as RSI (repetitive strain injury) and would help improve your study habits with regular breaks. Another contributing factor which cause us to settle on this idea is the fact that it is something we would use and benefit from having.

We're all rather excited about our idea and our initial discussion have  led to a rather large scope
- time based reminders to stretch eat and walk
- quirky comments using weather such as
-”It’s warm outside – take a lunch break in the sun” (using real weather data)
- “You had BurgerFuel for lunch yesterday – why not try Subway?” (using gps locations and maybe user input)
- “You only had 4 hours of sleep last night – time to head home” (using time from the last time you touched your phone and when your alarm clock went off)
- blocking distracting apps such as facebook, tumblr and youtube but notifying you on your break
- offering rewards such as chocolate bars after your goals have been achieved (goals would be set at the start of the day)
- reminding you what assignments you have due and what is required (ie you have an essay due in 3 days – have you written a draft?)

The app has the potentially to be a full on organisation app however we are going to start by focusing on the working hours of it and the health side as we know as students we have really bad habits. We need to figure out a realistic scope but think we’ll present an idea that can be expanded on.

Initial Idea

We were told to build an app around something that we care about. The main thing the three of us felt strongly about was student health and wellbeing. As media student we find we often don’t take very good care of ourself. We spend long hours sitting at computer and don’t do things like take regular break and eat when we’re supposed to. We’re interested in making an app which will promote better work habits and hopefully lead to more productive students

Project Three - On the Contrary

Group Project With

Nicky Hoffman and Ben Hartley