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.