Archive for March, 2012

“There’s nothing to do in this town” and “There are three universities here, but it’s not a college town” are two statements that are frequently said by college students on campus. However, it is common knowledge that there are indeed things to do in this town, the fact is that most people usually do not hear about the events, festivities or savings. Therefore, for this project I want to design an iPhone App that will show all the events/sales that are happening in your local area (so in this case, Abilene). The purpose of the app will be to show upcoming events, sales or discounts that shops are holding, and also places to shop that are site specific to Abilene (or another local area).

After interviewing potential users, the consensus was clear- there is “nothing” to do in this town. The main problem that I saw was that there was in fact events going on and places to go, but no one knew about them. Most people hear about events or things to do in Abilene by word of mouth. In fact, that was the only way people found out things to do. Facebook and Twitter were the main social media cites where people found out about places in Abilene to shop, or events that were going on that week. However, everyone agreed that most of the time, they found out about events being held AFTER the fact. This was a major problem, which I plan on fixing with this new app. The reason why Facebook and Twitter aren’t completely successful is because it’s limited to only inviting friends, even though you can make it an open event, there’s no way to search through events happening around your local area. With this event app, you can post upcoming events and make it public to who ever owns the app on their phone. However, there would also be an option to make events private to limit the guests to only friends.

The app would have features like rating the event or venue and also directions to the hot spots. I want to have the app be updated by third parties that way the “word of mouth” feeling won’t be lost and people can still make personal comments and recommendations for things to do in town. The app would be the “go-to” for college students and would bring about new things to do in town so that people would feel like maybe this IS a college town, they just didn’t have the right resources to find out what to do or where to go to make things interesting.

Since there already was a Type ID app I decided to take my app in a new direction. I want it to still be able to take a photo of typography and tell the user close to the typeface or the style. Also in the app a user would be able to pin on a map where he/she took a picture of it at and say the name of the font or family on his pin as well. This can give the app the ability to be ran just by the user. Kind of like Instagram and What the Font combined in one app.

Through my interviews I realized that more than just type lovers would use the app. I feel like It could become a competition or just a fun way to show what type styles you like. Most people said they would like to see the app and would be interested on how it can ID the font. But also, people really liked the idea of the social aspect that is similar to instagram. I think it would be a fun app, but also a way to learn more about the nerdy type world.

I am working on a sort of “City Hub” for small to medium sized local communities. The principle idea behind the website/app is to address the problem in college towns and other smaller cities where many local businesses, churches or cultural centers do not have any online presence whatsoever, and that it is very hard to find out what may be going on in town on any given night.

Before the interviews I was pursuing a social component to this, similar to facebook pages. Each business, school, church, event, etc. would have its own “hub”, and users would be able to discuss various topics in their respective forums or boards. After my interviews I believe that any social component would be antithetical to the idea of a convenient gathering place for all local places in a city.

My interviews were varied, and consisted of 50% college students/50% young adults or elderly in Abilene. Here are some of the conclusions I came to:

1) One of the most surprising things I gleaned from the interviews was that 9 out of 10 people said they discover new places around town primarily through word of mouth. I had thought at least a few younger people would use apps or websites, but even college students said they heard about where to eat or go to church from others.

2) People from big cities tend to enjoy going out and looking for new things to do in Abilene, and those from smaller or same-sized cities really preferred to stick to the places they knew about.

3) One of the questions I asked was “Have you ever been frustrated trying to find information about a local business online when there isn’t any?” To my surprise, a good number of users said they didn’t get frustrated, but just stopped looking altogether.

This information is really critical to developing a service that provides clear, accurate information and is usable enough by a wide range of demographics. In addition to the class discussion, I have shifted priorities from a ‘discussion hub’ to more of a yellow pages with reviews and media, focusing on local community.

My interview findings were pretty interesting. First of all, they showed 8/10 responses that people tend to go to a theme park approximately once per year. People’s best experiences at the park tended to either be centered around the group of people they were with, a ride that they rode, or short line lengths at the park, while worst experiences involved riding super scary/painful rides, waiting in line for a long time, or super crowded park visits. Those that had used a fastpass to get in front in the line fell at 5/10. Everyone said that they would be willing to take a smart device (iPhone, iPod Touch, Android) to the park if the park offered rewarding services. Some pointed out, however, that this would be contingient on the park offering good free WiFi, while others pointed out that they would not feel comfortable bringing an iPad/Tablet to the park for fear of losing it, not being able to put it in a pocket, etc.

I also asked people what information that they would like to know about a ride/attraction before walking to it. Almost everyone mentioned that they would like to know the wait time. Others wanted to see reviews from park visitors, information/stats on the ride, and ratings in terms of how scary the ride is, how intense the ride is, and health warnings for the ride. Lines tended to be deemed important for deciding which rides to ride, especially for ones that may not be the “extreme” rides that are the most popular at each park.

Most people were excited to hear about the prospect of my App as described, and said they would love to use something like it. When I asked for suggestions for additional features, I got quite a few interesting suggestions. Some suggested having the ability to look at the park in an augmented reality interface to see overlays of information. Others suggested having ratings from the park visitors, others suggested having the ability to look at line lengths, menus, and food prices for eateries in the park. Another suggested having a list of showtimes for various other attractions.

I interviewed people through an anonymous survey, because of the nature of my questions, some people would feel uncomfortable telling me about their medical problems. I need to do some more research about the demographics to narrow down who will specifically be using this app, but my initial interviews gave me some great feedback about general usage.

Most people have daily medications that they take, and with many of them it is at the same specific time every day. There is a wide range of medications so adding lost of medication choices, and entering your own medication with dosage amount and an image would be helpful. Then you would set up the specifications of what time of the day or take with or without food.

Many people have scheduling problems, so an alarm push notification with a snooze would be useful. Online ordering would be another great tool that the app would do.

1.Do you take medications on a daily basis?

2.If so, how many medications do you take, and what kinds?

3.What parameters do your medications have? (such as dosage amount, taken multiple times a day, with/without water, with/without food, or specific times of the day)

4. Have you ever had trouble remembering to take a medication?

5.How often do you forget to take a medication on a daily basis?

6.Have you ever have trouble identifying a medication? Please explain what happened.

7.Have you ever mixed up a medication, taken at the wrong time, or taken with another medication that was not supposed to be mixed? Did this result from trouble identifying the medication? Please explain what happened.

8.How do you currently handle your pill/medication schedule? Does this interrupt your daily life? Please explain.

9.Would you benefit from or use an application for a mobile device (iphone, android) that allows you to organize your pill schedule? What features might be useful? (alarm, images of pill, amount, etc.) Please explain.

10.Would the ability to re-order a prescription from your pharmacy from your phone be useful and beneficial? What pharmacy do you use? Please explain.

I interviewed a total of 12 people because the first 2 people I interviewed don’t go camping.

The first thing I found is that everyone i interviewed doesn’t have cell service when they go camping.

I also found that often they are plagued with closed roads and trails because of natural fallen objects across said roads or trails. When I asked them if there was a way to save that point on a map on their phone while offline so they could send it to the forrest service, would they ever use it and would it be helpful. 7 out of 10 said yes.

Some other people said it would be nice to have a social networking-esq app for outdoors people so they could share sweet trails and camping spots that they have been to, and they also thought that a feature to pin where dangerous wildlife has been spotted would also be useful. Since once an area becomes popular bears are usually soon to follow.

Of my 10 people 2 were hunters and they said that a app to show were lots of wild game had been spotted would not be used by either of them because it takes to trill of tracking out of the equation.

My proposal is to design an application named “Urban Runner”.  Essentially the idea is that this is an application geared to those that run. The main purpose of the application is to pinpoint a start to finish route based on your current location or even any GPS located starting location. But from where ever you are or wherever you intend to be the application would map out a route of your chosen distance and terrain. Individual users can create accounts that also act as a social network with friends.

The demographic for this application can be very diverse but primarily geared toward those who are avid runners and enjoy exploring new places to run. This particular application will have a friendly social aspect to it.  It will serve anyone from the range of  those who enjoy running as a fun fit pastime to those who are more serious runners that want to test their limits on all types of terrain. This will primarily be used on a mobile device but would ideally be formatted to other screens to update profiles.

The interviews served to be very helpful in determining key points to include in this app. Many people if not most people view safety as a big determining factor in where they run. This application will allow those who typically shy away from unfamiliar routes to try something new because safety will be taken into account. There will be levels of safety for any route inputted and saved based on many determining factors such as traffic, terrain and elevation, and access to emergency assistance. A rating system will be set in place so the user knows what they are getting into when they begin a route. One positive experience people often enjoy is running with friends and how motivating and uplifting that can be. The application will have to have certain social aspects in place to facilitate and encourage this. There will be a news feed in the profile and users can post group runs so that several people can run a route together. Friends can share routes with other friends and through GPS navigation can allow friends to see their location while running a route.  Another thing I found in my interviews is that people enjoy the idea of planning a route to go and get coffee or do another activity, the application will utilize Google maps navigation system in order to search things such as coffee places or restaurants so that they can be planned in a running route.

1. Do you like using apps as helpful information?

2. Do you attend ACU Athletics Sports games?

3. How do you know about the games?

4. What could help you be more informed about the games?

5. Would you rather buy your ticket in line or online before the fame?

6. Can you find the locations of games easily? (football field, baseball field, etc)

7. Would you want to learn more about the rosters for ACU and visiting team?

8. If you could not attend a game, would you like to know the score instantly?

9. Why do you go to ACU sports games?

10. What would make you attend more games?

11. Do you ever look at a player and wonder who he/she is?

Filter Questions

• Do you have/use Facebook?
• Have you ever visited a Facebook Page?

1. How long have you lived in this city? How did you first come here, and what do you currently do?

2.

3. How do you currently find out about local restaurants/events/music/churches?

4. Have you ever been frustrated trying to find information about a local event or business online?

5. Do you enjoy looking for new places to go around town?

6. Do you feel like there are things going on in this city that you don’t know about?

7. When looking for a new place to go, is this usually done at home beforehand or in the car on your phone/tablet?

8. If there was one location where you could view every local place in your city, would you frequently visit it or only visit if you needed to?

9. What kind of information would you like to see about businesses who do not have an online presence if you’re looking for them online?

10. Would it make you feel better knowing that there was one place you could always go to find information regarding local places and events in town?