Food on Wheels

The app Food on Wheels allows the user to find local food trucks. The food truck owners add their business on the app, link to their twitter or facebook accounts so that the app can use their feeds as "announcements" in their profile page. The owners update their current location on their own or when prompted by the app. The app will prompt the owner to update their current location timely by push notification.



For customers, the app suggests nearby food trucks based on the user's location in the main page. Outside the app, the app will send the notifications about nearby food trucks during the lunch time (11-1pm).  The user is also allowed to search new food trucks by name, distance, popularity and cuisine. The user can check in, add photos and reviews for rewards (haven't decided).

Main

Swipe right to see profile

Food truck profile page

(the top gray area is photo)

Collab App

Name of app: pending

Concept: A platform for design students in NYC to collaborate on projects

App map

Wireframes

Project #1. App Map & Wireframes

&sounds aim to archive the sounds that surround us when we take the time to emerge from this bubble. And in time, our memories of a place. You can record, listen and tag your own acoustics with a place. The user will be able to set up a profile for himself, monitor activity occurring on his recordings such as comments and likes, and bookmark the recordings he likes.

This is my thesis. I'm building a collective sound archive.

BikeNYC: App Map and Wireframes

My Project 1 Idea

For my NYC app, I want to create a simple mini game. It's a 2d side scroll game (run and jump) instead of 3d where the players have to survive. The goal for this game is to have the player to reach the exit from other side and to avoid any objects such as dogs, people, moving cars, etc. I want to create a pixlated 8 bit game because I enjoyed in creating a classic old school game. The players will have 3 lives. However, if the player louses 3 lives, the player has to start over to level one. Also, each of the levels will show a background will be based on the NYC setting (not sure what kind of setting, so i'm researching the background photos from the internet.

NYC App Wireframes and App map

VivaQuest

NYC Teen Wellness App

Name: VivaQuest (working title)

Categories: Health/Fitness, Games, Lifestyle

Target Audience: Teenagers in NYC

Platform: iOS

About

Description

VivaQuest is a wellness app for urban teens. Teens are offered three daily quests. The quests can be general things like, "eat a vegetable" or "don't drink any soda today." They can also be location based, such as "Visit the Union Sq farmer's market" or "walk the route shown on the map." The teen can accept one, two, or all three quests. They receive one star for each quest they complete by the end of the day. After completing a certain number of stars, the teen levels up and the quests get a bit harder.

Goals

Teens are at a critical point in their lives when it comes to developing healthy habits. For the first time in their lives they are no longer entirely dependent on their parents when it comes to meal choices and daily activities. They are also developing consciousness about their bodies. VivaQuest seeks to provide a supportive framework to help teens learn about and develop healthy habits.

The three core goals of this app are to:

• Educate teens about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise
• Encourage teens to develop healthy habits through daily repetition and encouragement
• Introducing teens to resources in their immediate area

How is this app different from existing apps?

• This app is targeted specifically toward teens - Existing apps are targeted mainly toward adults with a few targeted at children.
• This app will be free to use - Many existing health/fitness apps cost money or require external hardware (such as a heart rate monitor.
• This app will focus on developing healthy habits – Existing apps focus specifically on weight loss, calorie counting, body monitoring, and goal setting.

Quests

Daily Quests and Challenges

Daily quests are the bread and butter of VivaQuest. As the player, you get three per day, one of each category, nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle. You can swap out each quest for a different one up to two times. This is so that if a particular activity is just impossible for you one day (such as cooking a meal or going somewhere) you can select a different quest. You cannot swap out indefinitely, because then you might just pick the same quest over and over if you find one you like.

Challenges appear every few days. They are harder than normal quests but also have a bigger reward. Examples:

• Do 1000 crunches
• Run/walk 5 miles
• Cook a meal that uses 10 ingredients

Quest Categories

There are three quest categories:

• Nutrition
• Ex. Eat a vegetable
• Exercise
• Ex. Walk the route shown on the map
• Lifestyle
• Ex. Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator

Scoring

Quest completion is based on the honor system. When you mark a quest complete you are invited to share your progress via social networks.

Stars

Questers receive one star for each daily quest they complete. Group Quests and Challenges are worth three stars.

Level 1 = 3 stars (basically, if you complete all your quests the first day)

Level 2 = 6 stars

Level 3 = 12 stars (If you complete all your quests for week 1, you will reach level 3)

Level 4 and beyond = 25 stars (one week’s worth of daily quests plus a challenge)

Expansion Idea

Eventually, I think it would be cool to add a social function to this app, so that participants could do group quests with their friends. That would require a lot of additional functionality, such as profiles, messaging, address books, the ability to locate friends from existing networks etc.

Assignments for Feb 20

First things first:

For the love of all that is good—TAG YOUR POSTS. Use the Labels button to do so.


For next week:

Post a second iteration of your wireframes to the blog. I'll send you feedback via email to the 1st iteration. Document in your wireframes how you'd include accessibility features.

Some reading:

This is an excellent piece by Matt Gemmell—please read:
http://mattgemmell.com/accessibility-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/

Information about iOS accessibility features:
https://www.apple.com/accessibility/ios/
https://www.apple.com/ios/accessibility-tips/

Information about Android accessibility features:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/index.html
http://developer.android.com/tools/testing/testing_accessibility.html

Wireframes

EARPLUG App

A lot of New Yorkers are in danger of losing their hearing because of the high noise level in the city specially on the subway platforms, fabrication working environments, street traffic etc. Most of people even don't know that being exposed to a noise level of 85 decibels for more than 10 minutes can harm their hearing.
This app will help them to 
1) Bring awareness to New Yorkers about the danger of the city noise level and
2) Protect them from this danger.
This app will automatically measure the noise level of the user's environments and will notify them to leave the area before the time-limit danger or take an action. taking action could be playing a white noise when the noise level goes up in order to protect the users health (the user must wear a headphone in order to use the white noise background)
This app will also have a real-time online data platform from other user's decibel rates across the city and will suggest the "less noisy" routes options for the users to commute between their two locations.

Hi! I'm Mehdi, a second year student of MFA Design and Technology.
I haven't read the whole iOS guideline yet but I found the following very interesting (I'm an iPhone 4 user):
- The use of colors and depth in the design of the new interfaces help a lot the easy navigation and the quality of experience with the users.
- I found the Passbook feature very useful. I never used this feature before and excited to see the wide range of abilities and functionalities combined with new creative ideas and applications in near future. I love the idea of bridging the physical world and digital barcode in simplicity of this feature.
- The overall design of the booklet itself is very user friendly, using simple font, simple explanations, using colorful texts, and using a lot of snapshots, illustrations and images help the user quickly get to the point.

 One of my favorite apps is the the YAHOO WEATHER
It's an old app but it can be a great example of designing UI for mobile apps according to the iOS guidelines.

Mobile Wallet

Crystal's App Idea

I want to design an app that helps people create a buddy system for those who feel unsafe commuting from one place to another.

Wireframes

This app allows people to create collaborative music playlist with the people they are. One guy creates a session and using the gps the people who is around can join it. Everybody adds songs to the session and the songs plays one after another.

As this is an app for people to use when they are with their friends I am making the interaction as minimal and simple as possible.

iOS 7 icon resource

I came across this site that has free iOS icons and wireframing templates in a variety of formats.
http://speckyboy.com/2013/09/20/free-ios-7-gui-kits-templates/

NYC Data Available to the Public

Hey all!

For those who are still developing their ideas and seeking what is possible and what is out there in the market (competitive research), check out NYC government website about all the data that's available to the public to use!
#happybrainstorming
https://data.cityofnewyork.us

The Room

I recently played "The Room" on my iPad. I liked it for several reasons. First, it has great atmosphere. It is genuinely creepy and totally brakes the color-saturated, cutesy mold to which most game apps conform. Second, it is an activity in itself, not just a time filler. I was engrossed and I played the whole game through start to finish in a few hours. Again, this breaks conformity with most app games that are meant to be played for a few minutes here or there while we are commuting or standing in line. Finally, it made great use of touch screen in a way that genuinely worked with the mechanics of the game. This game would not be the same on a device without a multi-touch screen. This game was totally worth the dollar I spent to play it.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-room/id552039496?mt=8

More About Me

Hello! I'm Crystal

My favorite current apps are

• Rdio iPhone App- A really great music streaming app that has an aesthetically appealing interface with great user experience because it adds a lot of depth and sophistication. It has a better design quality than any other music app I've seen
• Sphere iPad App- Such a great exploration tool to look at photos in a subversive panoramic 3D image. The on boarding process was quick and straightforward, and there the main page is a discovery theme. All in all, it serves as a browsing tool for those who enjoy creative images and photography. 
• Motorola Spotlight Series Android App- This app is simply a story telling app with 3D graphics. It renders a virtual world and uses a gyro, accelerometer, and compass sensor to allow you to feel like you are within the story.

Android Guidelines

• Android's notification center very much complex with a lot of decision making which could be a good because you can multi task without leaving the center, or it could be bad because maybe the user uses it as simply just a news feed. I personally enjoy the extra informative visual images of the people who are notifying you.
• I really like reading about the concept of "action bars" in Android, because they explain what is the best way to place them to maximize you're screen real estate. They give you examples of where to place the action bars for the type of app you are making. The one thing I would mention though, is Android suggests to use a caret for the main action bar, but it's over redundant if your navigation button on your phone allows you to hit back anyways. 
• I like the overall feel of android's guidelines because they give very specific examples about how you can design your apps, and the logic behind the placement and IA. 

Introducing Myself: Carl Jadaa

Hello everyone!

My name is Carl Jadaa. I see myself as a designer always looking for ways and opportunities to innovate. I am particularly passionate about design, music, technology, fashion, and their fusion. I am a first year MFA student majoring in Design & Technology. I decided to do my masters here at Parsons because I find it to be a great environment to develop new ideas and solutions, to add new meaning on that which already exists, and to assign art to things that are popular.

My skills are in web design and development, graphic design, and social media marketing. I love discovering new music, helping others in technology, keeping abreast of new trends in pop culture, efforting long tranquil swims, devouring dark chocolate, discovering new teas & coffees, sinking into pop music, stumbling upon intriguing articles online, exploring emerging social media platforms, traveling the world, going for long rides on the bicycle, and staying fit & healthy. Those are my interests!

My favorite app is called Songza, a free music service that provides playlists created by music experts, in which the app recommends you with various playlists based on time of day and mood or activity. You should try it! It's like Beats Music, but it actually works much better!

I am really looking forward for this class, because I am particularly looking very closely into developing my own app ideas as soon as I possess the UX/UI skills to do so. 

Ambroise app Idea

For my NYC app, I want to create a simple system to "top-up" credit, or time, on one's metrocard. It would work with a credit/debit card, the user would input a metrocards ID number and link to his or her debit/credit card. EASY!

Further features can include a family mode, where "mom" takes care of her kids bus / subway passes ( for example)

#thursdayapp: Duolingo

I really LOVE Duolingo. It's been around for awhile, but I am just now getting into it as I want to learn French since Buzzfeed told me I should move to Paris :). I like the gaming aspect of learning a language and testing out one's accent and pronunciation of words is really cool through the audio/mic feature. It is easy to use and puts my language teachers in high school to shame.

Digital Doula - NYC App Idea

I am creating a mobile app for high-risk pregnant women of color in Harlem to reduce infant mortality – which is double the citywide average and similar to developing countries!

Could a mobile app act as an advocate for expectant mothers in Harlem?

The health of mothers and children is a critical indicator of the overall health of a community.  With infant mortality rates in Harlem similar to developing countries, the health and future success of this neighborhood is at risk. 

A media technology intervention has the power to turn the tide. 

While many factors lead to this outcome in Harlem, one solution is to create an opportunity for expectant mothers to effectively communicate with their doctors. 

A digital storytelling mobile app will provide expectant mothers with the tools to record personal health anecdotes and information to share with one’s entire spectrum of health supporters including doulas, social workers, community health workers, health advocates, and doctors. 

It is my hope that this mobile app will help decrease infant mortality in Harlem,  improve health literacy, and support doctor-patient relationships.

More About Me!

The question that always leads me is "How can I serve my community?"

I have nearly ten years of professional experience in the areas of international

development, HIV/AIDS education, and social marketing. 

I have done my small part to shed light on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. and abroad, 

address theplights of street children in Uganda and Ghana, 

and volunteer for causes I care about deeply 

like rebuilding homes post-Katrina in New Orleans and post-Sandy in New York.

My most rewarding professional experience thus far was my role as the manager

of the RealTalkDC social marketing campaign for Metro TeenAIDS, a non-profit

that encourages youth to get tested for HIV and STIs in Washington, DC – 

the city with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the United States. 

I saw firsthand the role that media technology 

and social marketing can play in improving lives.

I hope to use my experience employing social marketing strategies in the civic

sector as well as my education in digital media storytelling 

to help solve the crucial social justice issues of our time.

I am obsessed with eyebrow threading and fall fashion (ankle boots and layering… yes please!)

Can’t wait to learn more about you!

NYC App Idea

My idea is an app that maps the places in NYC that has inclusive policies for transgender. It includes places that offer gender-inclusive bathrooms, provide a means for trans people to use their preferred name and to change the gender on records and documents.

App Idea

I'm going to attempt a wireframe for a mobile wallet and payment system that "could" allow crypto-currency to be used at participating merchants- Nightclubs, Car Services, Fashion Boutiques, Restaurants.

This app would allow for user credit card and back account information, loyalty programs, and coupons on the smartphone, while also rewarding users as "Influencers" with crypto-currency/Rewards for interacting and sharing brand marketing on social networks via mobile ads.

#thursdayapp: Threes!

Threes! is infinitely better than Candy Crush and Flappy Bird. Original game design. No in app purchases. Brilliantly simple but endlessly playable. Smile factors such as cute animations and sound effects definitely keep me coming back for more. 

Gameplay consists of sliding numbered blocks onto one another to form higher numbers, but some important rules turn an easy concept into a challenging puzzle. Only like numbers can combine together, for instance, 3 and 3, to form a 6, which can then only combine with another 6. 1 and 2 are limited to combining with each other.

Tis a simple game, but difficult to master.

________________________________________________________

UPDATE:

Here’re some suggestions for improvement:

1. Retry button. I don’t get why the retry button is way up on the left. It isn’t user friendly, the game is designed for a single gesture : swipe. I play the game with just one hand (which I’m sure many of us do). The stretch for my thumb to tap that button is quite annoying, it’s in the OW zone (as written by Scott Hurff). Move it to the top right please, and replace that twitter button. I think the tweet/share button could be integrated with typing the player’s name after the score. Having said that, I’ll probably forgive the game designers because of the much enjoyment I derived from playing the game. 
2. Give me my score now. Please? Why do I need to swipe to see my score and swipe again to type my name in the scoreboard? I think a smoother transition without having to swipe would be nice.
3. Previous games. The other thing I don’t really get is why would I want to see my previous games, they display only the last move on these boards. If I can tap on it and be shown what and where I did wrong, I wouldn’t mind. All I want to do is to continue playing the game (start with a new board) and beat the game!