Blog 22: Senior Project Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Block Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

I am most proud of being able to reach the 30 minute talking time, and the 1 hour presentation time because I felt that I was not very good at talking for long a duration of time because I would always skip to main points or talk too fast, so I was proud of myself that I could reach the goals.

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Block Presentation (self-assessment)?

       P         

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

       P      

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

I was fortunate enough to be able to find a really good mentor which allowed me to find a lot of quality answers to my questions and provide me with hands-on material that I could learn and apply to my senior topic.

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

If I could do something differently, it most definitely would have been trying to start logging and working on my mentorship hours earlier. Since I waited till the last minute for this, I faced many close calls with not being able to go to grad night as well as a lot of unnecessary stress.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

The senior project has been very helpful to me because it allowed me to find a possible career path that I am now able to follow instead of going in to college undecided. I am now excited to pursue majoring in Business with an emphasis on Computer Information Systems. Without senior project, I probably would not know what I wanted to do and it also allowed me to learn a lot about mobile applications and the whole process of mobile development.

Blog 21: Mentorship

Literal
Karin Schott, Cal Poly Pomona

Interpretive
The most important thing I've gained from this experience is understanding my topic better and allowing me to get hands on experience on my topic. It has allowed me to further work with my mentor and create solid information that I can apply to my presentation.

Applied
This experience has helped me answer my Essential Question by allowing me to ask my mentor any questions I had. It also provided me very valuable information that I learned from sitting in on meetings and conference calls that allowed me to see what I was researching, in person.

Blog 20: Exit Interview

Content:
1. My Essential question is: What is most important to a user-friendly app?  My answers are: efficient to where the user can perform any given task on the first try, having good appeal and design, and having good usability. My best answer is having good appeal and design because if your appeal is bad no one will want to use your app even before trying it. If it does not look good on a visual perspective, it will be quickly surpassed. A user-friendly app has to have many functions that are easy to use and easy to understand which is based off of the design.
2. To find my best answer I went through a couple of my answers. I wasn't really sure which was my best until I did some further research and talked to some people. I came to the conclusion that because the appeal is the first impression that you give your users, and the design is what makes the app function in a friendly manner, the design and appeal would be my best answer.
3. One of the problems that I faced was being able to prove my best answer. It was hard to find research stating with statistics that users will pass apps that are not appealing and that the design of the app has the potential to create a non user-friendly environment. I resolved it by using the Cal Poly Database to look at many papers written by credible sources and came to the conclusion by tying in that some users are unaware of the permissions that the app is granted due to poor design by the creators by not allowing a better form of communication.
4. The two most significant sources I used to answer my essential question was my mentor, Tim Raymond, and Usability 101: Introduction to Usability, by Jakob Nielson. The reason I picked these two were because they have helped me the most with answering my essential question. My mentor has allowed me to really comprehend and understand the complexity of designing an app. There are so many more parts to it than I imagined. The article that I picked really helped me figure out my third answer to my essential question. It gave me the stepping stones along with a lot of knowledge on usability and why it is important to user-friendly apps.

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

LITERAL
(a) Statement saying: “I,Bradley Schott, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component Working on my independent component, I took an online class that produced youtube videos every week to help me understand the material. Using that material, we would take a pre-quiz, sanity test, and an actual quiz. I did not have to  use any outside sources to help me.
(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.
(d) Explanation of what you completed.    
INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work. For my independent component 2 I took an online course that is still currently going on. Up to the point I am at, I have worked on it for more than 30 hours. Basically, I am given material through videos and then I have to take quizzes and do applied work for it.  (There is currently only 1 thing in the grade book because the course is not over and grade book is not updated, but here are some pictures of some of my quizzes and current grade book)
http://i.imgur.com/wNdjd5V.png
http://i.imgur.com/g2AOJuB.png
http://i.imgur.com/tsxIKgo.png"
APPLIED
How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 
Understanding how to code in excel helps me relate to how programmers have to code in their programs and applications. Excel is just another application that is widely known by us. Learning this application helps me understand and answer my eq: What is most important to a user-friendly application because I get to see first hand the user-friendliness of excel and go in-depth of what it can and can't do.

Blog 18: Third Answer

• EQ: What is most important to a user-friendly app?
• Answer #3 : The most important thing to a user-friendly app is good usability.
• 3 details to support the answer (a detail is a fact and an example)
• Detail 1: Usability is the ease of use of the application. EG: How easy you can navigate through the app.
•  http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
• Detail 2: A first impression is largely composed of how much usability the app has.
•  http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
• Detail 3: The usability determines if a user will decide to pick your app out of the competition.
• http://www.nngroup.com/courses/application-ux/
• Concluding Sentence: Usability is key to creating a user-friendly app because it determines how easy the app is to operate and use.

Blog 17: Fourth Interview

Content:

1. What is most important to a user-friendly app?
2. What is the best way to make an app efficient?
3. What is the best way to create a successful app?
4. How can you create the best possible design for an app?
5. What makes an app successful?
6. What is the difference between mobile apps and computer apps?
7. What is the best way to make apps faster?
8. What is the difference between websites and web applications?
9. What are the different type of web applications?
10. What is the best way to identify the users of your app?
11. What is the best way to create a user friendly interface?
12. How can you best compare your app with other apps that do the same thing?
13. What is the best way to create a clean presentation?
14. What is the best way to advertise your app to users?
15. What is the best way to create easy navigation on an app?
16. What is the best way to create easy readability on an app?
17. What is the best way to make your app mobile friendly?
18. What is the best way to understand what users want in an app?
19. What is the best way to produce a profitable app?
20. What is the best way to find a niche to create an app for?

Blog 16: Advisory Meeting #2

Content:

Answer 2: The most important aspect to a user-friendly app is a good design. 

Detail 1: Readability.
example: The information and text has to be not too big and not too small to read. 
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/user-friendly-web-design/

Detail 2: Augmenting Human Capabilities
 example: If using a business app, direct the user's attention to a small number of important issues instead of overwhelming them with all possible options
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/best-application-designs/

Detail 3: Navigation
example: Do not make it hard to move around in your app. Navigation is very important to user's because people will not be patient and try to figure out where to go and how to use it. 
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/user-friendly-web-design/


Concluding sentence: The design of an app is one of the most important keys to having a successful app on the market. 

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. I Plan to take an online computer programming class and watch video and then take some quizzes and tests on the information that I learned.
2. I will show evidence by submitting my quiz or test scores that I will have taken by the time the blog is due.
3. This will help my topic because I will further understand programming at a deeper level.
4. Done.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

• LITERAL
  (a) Statement saying: “I, student name, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
  (b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component
  (c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.
• (d) Explanation of what you completed.    
• INTERPRETIVE 
  Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.  
  
• APPLIED
  How did the component help you understand the foundation of your topic better?  Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 

Literal: 

a. I, Bradley Schott, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

b. I actually got quite a bit of help from my mom who is in the IT field. Also I got some help from various websites such as http://www.codecademy.com. This is the sort of like Khan Academy, but for programming.

c. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvTj5YXLfzo4dDFuTWVUQXdzdE9uWEdGNHpPVE84NUE&usp=drive_web#gid=0

d. I took an online course via podcast/flash video. 

Interpretive:
 This course helped me further understand computer science and the technical world. It also helped me find some of the answers to me E.Q. You can check out all of the videos/audios here: http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative/intensive-introduction-computer-science

Applied:
 It helped me understand the amount of complexity there is to coding and programming. I never realized how much you actually had to learn and understand to do some of the simplest things. For example, in most coding languages you have to be very precise and exact on where you put your brackets and make sure that you have one that links up to another one because if one out of the couple hundred is off, then your program will most likely not work at all. When I first started this I focused more on my old E.Q. which had to do with coding languages, but now that I am focused more on user-friendliness, so it doesn't apply to me as much.

Blog 13: Lesson 2 Reflection

1. Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?

Being able to present and truly understand what I am saying to my audience while also hitting the time frame without having to worry or try too hard.

2. Questions to Consider
       a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation (self-assessment)?

       P

       b.     Explain why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.
I think I deserve a P because I showed up on time with every thing turned in (Lesson plan final draft), and had my poster ready along with my power point. I hit the 10 minutes of speaking time as well as the 20 minute total time. I also talked about my mentorship in the middle of my presentation along with citing my research sources. 


3. What worked for you in your Lesson 2?
I felt much less nervous this time when I presented because I had rehearsed my presentation a lot more than I usually practiced for other presentations.

4.  (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?
Maybe start working on it a little bit more in advanced because I started only a couple days before and I think it would have taken a little bit more of the stress off if I possibly started a bit earlier.
5. Finding Value
What do you think your answer #2 is going to be?  
Having a strong base for layout and design. ( for example: having all the coding done in a manner where as it is easy to design the app or change it)

Blog 12: Third Interview Questions

1. What is most important to a user friendly app?

2. What makes something user friendly?

3. Do applications always have to be user friendly to be successful?

4. What are some why something wouldn't be user friendly?

5. What makes a successful app?

6. Is it important to emphasize user friendliness when creating app?

7. How does user friendliness affect consumers?

8. What are the different types of applications?

9. How can apps be adjusted to make them user friendly? example?

10. What are different forms of user-friendliness in applications?

11. Is there a difference between the underlying structure between a mobile app. and a computer app?

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 hours check

Content:

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

Cal Poly Pomona

2.   Who is your contact?

Tim Raymond

3.   How many total hours have you done (total hours should be reflected in your mentorship log located on the right hand side of your blog like your WB)?   

10ish

4.   Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.

I helped him out with attending different meetings for implementing different software as well as sat in with him while talking to different companies about purchasing software. I watched and somewhat help him create the Cal Poly App.

5.   Email your house teacher the name of your contact and their phone number confirming who they should call to verify it.

Senior Project, The Holiday

1.  It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you over the break with your senior project?

Over the break I did some research on apps and what makes them user friendly and why. Since Cal Poly was on break I did not work on my mentorship. I also talked to some family and asked then what they thought was important in a user friendly app.


2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

I found out that it is very important for the user to be able to achieve their primary task on the app on the first try. A lot of companies will not put their app out on the market until they do several tests and checks to make sure that the app is very accessible to the client. This is one of the sources that I used: http://www.aqabatech.com/article.php?article=331
3.  If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers of your EQ, who would you talk to and why?

I would probably talk to my mentor Tim Raymond up at Cal Poly because he is very informed on the different software and is currently developing an app for Cal Poly himself.