Final stage

Hello!

For this week, as mentioned in the previous post, we made a short film to briefly explain explain the main idea and functions with our app. The result is an approximately one minute, silent film a la Charlie Chaplin inspired video. We had a lot of fun making it, and the response at the exhibition today was very positive. We're glad people liked it!


Here's a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-4SODsXd60


Have a good one!
/Linn, Erik and Kalle

Update

Hi again!

As mentioned earlier, the last couple of weeks have been spent on making prototypes. Every week we've gotten some kind of feedback, which we have taken into consideration when further developing the app. The app still contains of two parts, where the updated child version is available through this link: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/RZ68QE93B#/screens/139035184. The feedback we've gotten has for example made us add the feature of the child being able to suggest sure in order to make the app more "fair", which we thought was a good point.

Today we also visited Mobile Life in Kista where we showed off our app to the researchers there, as well as getting a glimpse of what they are working on there. All the people we showed our app to seemed to think it was a good idea, which was nice to hear. It was a nice experience overall also - it's always fun to have an opportunity to go out into the "real" world and see how things are done outside our own academic bubble.



The coming week we will spend on making a short film for the final exhibition we have on Tuesday. We don't really have any concrete plans of how the film will be yet, but we're excited to work with it and see what we come up with.

All the best,
Linn, Kalle & Erik

IxD Criticism

This is a review of the app "Step it up" made by group 24.

Link to project blog.

We think this app is a positive force in the world. The goal of getting people to exercise more is an admirable one. Money is likely a good motivator for many people, but it might not be best for everyone. Ideally, a competitive spirit would be all the motivation you’d need, but that’s not realistic.

When it comes to the design, we think the app should be more “in your face” with evaluating your performance. It should criticize you when you’re doing poorly, remind you when you’ve been inactive, and reward you when you’re doing well. As far as we could tell, most of the interaction with the app was done when setting up a contest and when evaluating the results. During a contest, we couldn’t find much to do besides checking up on everyone’s progress. It would be nice to have a group chat or some other way of interacting with each other during a contest.

As soon as money enters the equation, there’s bound to be ethical and moral issues down the line. Heated arguments might rise. The bonds of friendship might be tested. We’re also wary of the potentially addictive aspects of the app.

Another thing we’re worried about is the app contributing to the current social pressure surrounding physical exercise. While exercising is a great thing, it - like all things - should be taken in moderation.

The developers were a bit inconsistent when it came to the target group of the application. One group they mentioned was moms, as they would be a group wanting to compete with their friends. The second group mentioned was just groups of friends. We think that the application should have a specific target group in mind to be able to tailor the design accordingly. Our own suggestion for a target group is, which they had previously had suggested to them, co-workers. We have heard about a step-contest going on at CSC, where some people have gotten so engaged in the competition that they have put treadmills in front of their computers so they can walk while they work. We believe that a bit of competition between co-workers is a healthy addition to the otherwise rather slow and lazy day.

Prototyping

Hello!

Last we spent on making prototypes. Since our app is made out of two parts, one for the parent and one for the child, we made two prototypes. The parent version we programmed ourselves using HTML, CSS and Javascript. The child version was made using Illustrator and Invision.

Here are links to the two prototypes:
https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/RZ68QE93B#/screens/139035184
http://xml.csc.kth.se/~eforsbe/mfi/

Intro

Hi!

We are three students at KTH in Stockholm who are working on a second project in the course DH2628 Interaction Design Methods. The project is based on ideas developed by students in the grades 7 to 9 who participated in a competition called Appjakten.

This time we chose to combine two ideas which resulted in an app that we decided to call Sure! It is an app where parents can give their children household chores and as a reward they get a certain amount of minutes on Netflix.

Here is a link to our first presentation of the project:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XM-0wyeUUJNM1BAOfjHoyoPNOWdSJclFJsLr7MHNFL4/edit?usp=sharing

To be continued!