Criteria B - Term 3

For term 3's criteria B in investigating and designing I will be making possible designs for a test website that I will try to make professional looking.

Page Sections

Home page - The greeting page that is first seen when somebody clicks on the website. 

About page - In a paragraph gives a brief summary of what the website is there for.

Gallery page - Gives a visual representation and delivery of the ideas that the website wants to share with its audience.

Contacts page - This page gives the visitor the opportunity to leave constructive feedback by making a quick comment by filling out a form provided on screen or to contact the owner of the site via email or telephone which is also provided on the page.

Design Brief

There is a criteria that must be met which I will write below, that specifies how exactly the website is to be made:

- Should be straight to the point

- Should use an unsophisticated but visually attractive colour scheme

- Navigation bar should be easily accessed

- Navigation bar must look the same and be in the same area on every page/section

- Home page must have a clear title

- About page should not be too long of a paragraph so as not to bore the visitor

- Should include pictures in the gallery to provide the audience a visual understanding

- Contact page should include immediate contact details as well as where to find the location of the place and should have an area where the visitor can leave a comment

Design 1

Home page: nice, simple design with the title and navigation bar included as well as a picture.

About page: Good amount of space provided to write about the purpose of the website, again with the website title and navigation bar included and a background picture.

Gallery page: Enough space for 10 pictures which is more than enough to let the visitor see what the website is all about.

Design 2

 Home page: This design includes a creative positioning of navigation buttons and website title as well as stylish effect on the corners.

 About page: The same thing is done on the corners as on the home page and again the text, title and picture are positioned creatively.

 Gallery page: Here the visitor is able to flip through the pictures in the gallery.

Chosen Design:

The design that was chosen was design 1 due to the fact that it looked more simple and more professional than the more childish design 2. Home page and about page fit more towards what was aimed for in the design brief specifications while the design 1 gallery design was just overall better since in design 2 you can't see all the pictures at once and click on one to enlarge it.

How to Test the Website

- Make sure that the URL works

- Click on all sections on the navigation bar to make sure all parts of the website are accessible

- Click on all pictures in the gallery and check for quality to make sure that none of them are corrupt in some way

- Leave a comment using the form in the contact page to see if it works

- Check for general English grammar and spelling mistakes

Tech Fair 2016 - Criteria D - Reflecting

How is your product working when compared to the design specification you mentioned in Criteria A?

My partner and I are currently in the process of applying finishing touches to our project, phone app ‘Study Buddy’, and it has met most - if not all – the specifications on our design brief. We feel like we did a good job making Study Buddy relatively similar to Managebac however you will find some features in our app that do not exist on the Managebac app. Like the class timetables, links to educational videos and other content and general organizational tools that help enhance student education. My partner and I for these reasons consider Study Buddy a success.

Get feedback about your product from your friend who has used/seen the product.

“Study Buddy is beautifully designed, with very good features such as the calculator and many useful links that I have used to help me study.” –Ali Asif 10B

Explain how the solution could be improved.

We were pleased with the outcome of this project, but there are things that could be done to improve its capabilities. For one, we could add and consistently update a calendar that would contain upcoming important events in the school or something like a homework timetable. That however is not possible as higher management has not made a homework timetable and it is not up to us how the timetable will be set. Finally, we could add more links and videos that we find would benefit student learning.

Explain the impact of the solution on the client/target audience.

We feel that if Study Buddy was to be used in the school, it may help improve the learning of students by providing informative links, reminders about homework and events. Also since a lot of people in our school use the Android system on their devices, they will not be left out on any information shown through Managebac.

Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the product developed

Strengths	Weakness
·         Self-explanatory clear name, ‘Study Buddy’ ·         Made visually appealing for audience ·         Allows for easy teacher to student communication ·         Easy to use and access ·         Environmentally friendly (doesn’t use paper) ·         Provides useful information	·       Missing a calendar to include events ·       Missing a homework timetable ·       Has not been fully tested ·       May freeze and be generally slow

Tech Fair 2016 - Criteria C - Creating the Solution

Gantt Chart (Action Plan)

Flow Chart

Creation Process Record (pictures and descriptions)

We chose to use a software called Appypie that allows us to make apps with very little coding involved. 

There are three steps to creation. The 'Selection' section allows you to pick a name, the category/purpose for which you are building the app and a set of themes and templates that can be customised are picked out 

The 'Build' Section, is where the content implementation, styling and customizing takes place. Appypie allows us to choose from a range of fonts, styles, sizes, icons, backgrounds, headings and more to build our own app as well as choose what content to implement such as calculators, dictionaries, video links and even the Qur'an for Islamic Studies students.

Finally at the 'Publish' section, we can choose the system and market on to which we wish to publish our app and let it process.

Tech Fair 2016 - Criteria A - Inquiring and Analysing

Introduction

I will be taking part in the annual technology fair at EIS Meadows with my partner, Gabor. We have experience in creating quality technological projects as we were selected last year and the year before to showcase our work at the previous tech fairs with different partners. This year we decided to work together and hope to win the prize as there is less competition for us this year. Tech fair requires a group to come up with a useful idea and bring it to life using various technology related skills that will be acquired in the process of creation. In this blog post I will describe my partner and my two possible ideas for the fair.

Idea 1 + Idea Analysis

For the first idea, we thought about assembling a cleaning robot. It will be a simple construction of a robot designed for moving around and cleaning the surface under it. We believe it will be useful for anybody who does not have the time to clean the floor, someone who is physically disabled or in case the person is too lazy. This project will require some research as we have no experience in creating a robot and materials for the project itself. There are of course benefits, weaknesses, opportunities and risks that come with this idea.

Strengths	Weakness
- Easy to use - Time saving - Takes up little space - Durable	- Looks ugly - Requires recharge/replacement of battery - May take long to assemble - Possibility of malfunctioning
Opportunity	Risks
- To learn about robotics - Robot could be radio controlled - Robot could be made more visually appealing	- Small, could be lost or people could trip over it/step on it/electrocute - Could bring up dust and cause asthma

 

Materials Required:

- Cleaning brush

- Motor

- Fan

- Battery holder

- Superglue

- Electricity wires

Possible Research and Action Plan

Activity	Materials Required	Primary Research	Secondary Research
Finding out how to create a cleaning robot	Internet tools such as YouTube	Possibly interviewing people who have experience in creation of robotics	Watching tutorials / reading up about creating the robot on the internet
Designing the robot on paper by brain-storming the mate-rials needed and making a rough sketch	Pen, paper, ruler	-	-
Acquiring materials and building the robot	Money, materials above	Going to stores to look for the required materials or taking them from home	-

Advantages

- Doesn't take up much space

- Doesn't make noise

- Automatic

- Very useful

- Easy to use

- Easy to fix

- Simple design

Disadvantages

- Easy to break

- May malfunction

- Easy to trip over

- Can be lost

- Visually unappealing

- Requires recharge or change of batteries

- Does not clean a large area / takes long to clean
- We have no experience creating robots

Idea 2 + Idea Analysis

Our idea number two involves exploring the features and possibilities of a simple phone application creator that can be used for educational purposes. My partner, Gabor, and I plan to create a replica of 'Managebac' for Android phone system users as Managebac is only available on IOS platforms. This would allow for efficient communication between students and teachers.

Strengths	Weakness
- Convenient student to teacher communication - No cost to make - Will be made easy to use and visually appealing - Overall helps students be more organised	- May be different to Managebac - May not work as intended and become difficult to use - Teachers will have to use Managebac and our app
Opportunity	Risks
- Some kind of security system might be installed to prevent the app being hacked - New skills of phone app development	- Vulnerable to hackers as we are inexperienced app creators

Materials Required:

- Application creating software

Possible Research and Action Plan

Activity	Materials Required	Primary Research	Secondary Research
Looking for the right app creator	Internet	-	Researching various easy to use app creating software
Learning to use the app creator and seeing how our idea can be implemented with the installed features of the app creator	App creating software	Exploring the features of the app creating software manually	Watching YouTube tutorials and guides on how to use the software
Creating the app	App creating software	Using the previously created plan to create the phone app	-

Advantages

- Generally a useful project.
- Easy access to schoolwork for students using Android platforms.
- Familiar to target audience.
- Communication between students and teachers.

Disadvantages

- Features and possibilities may be limited. The app creation software may be good but restricted to a free trial. The full version may be costly.
- Takes time to learn about app creation.
- Teachers may find using our app is inefficient, destroying the purpose of the project.

Design Brief and Chosen Idea

The idea Gabor and I have chosen to realise as our Tech Fair project was a phone application after thoroughly discussing and comparing the possibilities, ups and downs of both ideas. Thus far we have only found some viable websites and software that are fitting for the creation of our project. We have come up with some guidelines that we would like to achieve with the created product. General things that our phone app should feature despite the fact that it might be hard since we have no experience in creating phone apps:

- First and foremost, an attractive design

- Messaging feature such as the one on Managebac

- Lesson timetables

- Ways to contact teachers and head staff

- Educational resources and websites

- Various organisational tools

Scratch Animation 4 - Pong Game

Scratch Animation 3 - Football

Scratch Animation 2 - Press Space to Activate

Scratch Animation - World Map