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Nov 28th, 2014
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  1. 1. User
  2.  
  3. Our project consists in changing the whole experience of travelling to other countries, a
  4.  
  5. different way to get to know different cultures and places, which means the user is a keyfactor to
  6.  
  7. the development of the final product.
  8.  
  9. We proceeded to a direct study with possible users of our application, this way we could gather
  10.  
  11. all information about what are the needs of users and what they expect from a plataform like the
  12.  
  13. one we are developing. We started by making a little quiz on the matter to which 21 people
  14.  
  15. answered. On the question "You think there's a lack of connection between foreign
  16.  
  17. students/travellers and the local people in your hometown?" 80% answered yes, this making us focus
  18.  
  19. on ways to improve the communication between travelers and locals through our application, we came
  20.  
  21. up with solutions as an interactive local events feed with comments and an "Ask Arround" feed,
  22.  
  23. with recent questions and answers made by locals and travelers arround the user on different
  24.  
  25. categorized topics. *grafic here*
  26.  
  27. All the other statistics we gathered all joined to the same conclusion we had previously on how to
  28.  
  29. approach the problem and its solutions, that being a real time interaction with travelers and
  30.  
  31. locals near the user, giving each user the option to ask and receive a real time answer from a
  32.  
  33. local or looking for other users answers to previous questions on various topics, also knowing the
  34.  
  35. location of other users near you which might lead to a more direct interaction hopefully leading
  36.  
  37. to diffrent social experiences and culture sharing. From the view of a traveller user the visiting
  38.  
  39. the visiting of certain cultural/historical areas is very important, so a task this plataform will
  40.  
  41. have to perform will have to be to provide a maped guidence (through GPS) to certain interest
  42.  
  43. points recommended by other users.
  44.  
  45. Based on all the information gathered we developed a low fidelity prototype in flash (actionscript
  46.  
  47. 2.0) to decide how would all the tasks that the application would have to perform be executed, in
  48.  
  49. a intuitive, fast and simple way.
  50.  
  51. With the low-fidelity prototype in flash we came to the conclusion that one main button to access
  52.  
  53. all main tasks of the product should be accessible from every different current "page" that the
  54.  
  55. user is viewing would make all the interaction between the user and the software faster and
  56.  
  57. simpler.
  58.  
  59. After some experimenting we decided the base structure of how the application would have to be
  60.  
  61. "organized", so that an user that is using it for the first time can discover how to perform any
  62.  
  63. task wanted within very few clicks, that way the user will be able to access all information that
  64.  
  65. our project plans to provide, in each respective task, in the fastest way possible, without the
  66.  
  67. user being confused with the way it has to interact with the application.
  68.  
  69.  
  70. 2. Technology
  71.  
  72. For the past three years android smartphones have been the most used worldwide, since our project
  73.  
  74. goal is to be an effecient quick way to access information about a location while travelling,
  75.  
  76. going for a mobile application is the best option and being android the most popular we opted to
  77.  
  78. develop it for that specific OS.
  79.  
  80. This android application will be available in all android versions, since it has low requirements.
  81.  
  82. We used flash and actionscript 2.0 to create a simple prototype test with the users. The simple
  83.  
  84. prototype wasn't connected to any database or even had any animations, it was only some frames
  85.  
  86. with a navigatable possible user interface for our project.
  87.  
  88. To develop the application we'll use:
  89.  
  90. -Eclipse + ADT plugin;
  91. -Android SDK Tools;
  92. -Android Platform-tools;
  93. (from the standard android development kit)
  94.  
  95. (https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html?hl=i)
  96.  
  97. -Facebook login android system
  98. (from facebook developers)
  99.  
  100. To store all the data we opted to implement a MySQL with all the needed tables to store user
  101.  
  102. information and info feeds (ex:Events,Ask Arround). We opted to use MySQL because is easy to use,
  103.  
  104. free, secure and fast.
  105.  
  106. In the "Find Travelers" and "Find Locals" lists we'll need to have a filter to prioritize the
  107.  
  108. information shown, for that a simple algorithm will be implemented in the code that loads the
  109.  
  110. database, which will then load first locals/travelers with common language as the user, then the
  111.  
  112. ones closer and after the ones with common interests.
  113.  
  114. The application will require a global positioning system on the phone so it'll be able to
  115.  
  116. calculate which are the nearest "locals" or "travelers" arround the user.
  117. To the implementation of that map we'll use standard google API for android development with a
  118.  
  119. simple algorithm that calculates the distance of users.
  120. (http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/location/index.html)
  121.  
  122. 3. Goals
  123.  
  124.  
  125. With the analysis the study of the user and the research on the tecnologie to use we defined our
  126.  
  127. goals with this project.
  128.  
  129. Our main goal is to build an intuitive and easy to use mobile application that'll allow travelers
  130.  
  131. to get to know a new location with a constant interaction with locals, that will allow foreigns to
  132.  
  133. discover and view any place in the world from the locals point of view, per exemple get to know
  134.  
  135. the best way to use public transports or the best/cheapest restaurants. Since our target "public"
  136.  
  137. for this plataform will be very wide (tourists, erasmus students, emigrants), the application will
  138.  
  139. have to be very simple, and every task that it can perform will be at a little "click distance"
  140.  
  141. from any point of the plataform. To make the log in an easy task, is also one of the goals we set,
  142.  
  143. so that the user can be in using the application as soon as possible from the moment it is
  144.  
  145. installed. Fast real time information obtained directly through other users is also one of our
  146.  
  147. aims with this project. Our project also intends to provide a guide to various points of interest
  148.  
  149. (museums, monuments, culturaral areas, etc..) to a visiting foreign, that information being
  150.  
  151. provided in real time on a map through a geolocation system being also information given by locals
  152.  
  153. or previous travellers, since every user will be able to "pin" on the map points of interest.
  154.  
  155. One of the most important objectives we have is the safety of our software, since our project will
  156.  
  157. require a lot of user information storage it is very important that that information remains safe
  158.  
  159. and that the users can trust in our system. The software also has to be as effecient as possible
  160.  
  161. and also fast without requiring too much of the phone hardware, so it can run in older devices
  162.  
  163. without any problems. In this same matter regarding security and privacy, we'll give user's the
  164.  
  165. choice of which information they want to add to our databases.
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