We have entered almost all of our content for the app. Now it is time to decide on the Main and Splash pages. We had a look at the rough sketches and the feedback from Ian and Cynthia. I thought we might be able to choose our pages based on the rough sketches, but that was not a good decision. The students really needed to see more before choosing. Students have strong opinions and are attached to various concepts and we needed to make the process fairer. Our first time through this process today did not go well and it was my fault for not thinking this part through carefully. With the end in sight, I wanted to rush the process in order to finish the project which led to some upset students. My mistake, Class 62.
So it was back to the drawing board.
We have now come up with criteria for the pages and a process for voting. Here they are:
The image must be portrait and not landscape.
The image MUST represent Dundas. When you look at it, you should recognize the town.
It must be designed with the audience in mind: a tourist who might want to visit the town.
It must be a complete design, neatly drawn, coloured, with text.
There must be nothing unclear about the image nor the text.
All designs should be reducable to the size of the iphone screen: 2 inches x 3inches
The design should demonstrate creativity and originality and careful planning.
Be creative in your button design.
Splash page should be colourful.
Main page: maximum 5 buttons that fat fingers can tap and not get the wrong button
Come up with appropriate names for the buttons.
The first button should say home or welcome or something to that effect as it is where we will introduce and explain our app as well as the mystery game.
Entries should be submitted anonymously. Mrs. Siwak does not want to know who did which one until after the voting.
Remember Cynthia's and Ian's advice: simplicity, colour, creativity, layout
The design may be submitted for the Splash Page or the Main Page, but not for both; however, you may submit two separate designs if you wish.
Students now feel comfortable that the selection process will be equitable.
All entries are due by Tuesday, 2nd Nutrition Break and we will vote in period 6.
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Hello Class 62 - we're looking forward to seeing your designs. It's important to remember that with iPhone apps on the App Store, the testing is *VERY* important.
ReplyDeleteWe'd really like to see the designs and comment on them, so that you understand if there are any problems with size or readability etc. This is the way we do it for real-world projects. I just wanted to point this out in advance so that after you've voted - if there are things we still need to tweak for usability (ie. we help you tweak it until it's usable and not at all confusing for the average person), you understand that it's a process we're go through normally in making apps. The App Store review staff at Apple will also check this with every app after we submit it to the Apple iTunes store.
It's REALLY important to print out the template at the actual iPhone physical size that I've put into the wiki and put your design into that as you're working on it. (You can draw it on a bigger sheet if it helps, but it's *STRONGLY* recommended that you keep checking how it looks at the actual size.) That way, you'll catch issues like buttons being too small or text being hard to read or going off the screen before you've done too much work on it.
Have fun!
- Ian
Thanks Ian. You've saved us some grief. We will work on the template!
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