Welcome to the the Drexel Interactive Map (DUMap) design blog.
The goal of the DUMap Development Team is to establish an Android application for smart phones that will enable users to easily navigate through Drexel University's campus. The application will cater to both Drexel Students and visitors alike, whether users are attempting to locate their University 101 class or the admissions office for a tour. Along with that, we want to provide information on Drexel facilities and neighboring locations, such as dining locations and local stores.
Information on Team Members and Advisors can be found here.
The goal of the blog is to keep those interest in the progression of the DUMap current throughout the eleven week design process. For week one, DUMap was faced with the challenge of determining the specifics of the application and end goals.
When starting the process of DUMap, the questions to be considered were..
What should be incorporated in the initial design?
- Large Campus Map
- Shows buildings
- Zoom enabled
- Blueprint / Floor Plans of all Drexel Buildings
- Inclusive of room #
- Search Functions allowing users to search buildings
- 'You're Here' Marker if the student is on campus
- Points of Interest
- Dining Halls
- Study Areas
- Outside Facilities
- etc.
- Descriptions of places
- Description
- (if applicable) Hours
- (if applicable) Menus
- Upcoming Events Campus Events
- Sporting Events
- University Presentations
- etc.
As we are still in the first week of design, these are only our initials thoughts on the project and we plan to take an active approach to creating this application.
What platform/OS do should the application use?Android rather than iOS was determined to be the best option. The major factor question when making that decision was "which has more user base. According to comScore's study in late 2011, Android has more users base than iOS with nearly 44% of smart phone users having Android devices to 27% having iPhones [1]. Hitting more users and being available to a larger part of the population is key. If there is great success with Android, moving over to iOS would be the next logical step.
Who is the target user?
The target audience is quite large as there is the need to cater to all those who want or need directions on the campus on a micro and macro level. Students who have little knowledge of, for example, Curtis may be unfamiliar with how to find Curtis 258, which DUMap intends to solve through building blueprints. On the other hand, visitors may need to know how to find the admissions office which is located in Main. First, they would need to find Main and then they would need to find the admissions office. The application is able to assist in that area by providing the initial view of the whole campus, similar to a Google Map view, all the way down to a building floor plan.
Week One Status:
- Website / Blog opened
- Design specifics determined
- Work has been divided and responsibilities assigned to the DUMap Team Members. The generic assignments of each individual member can be found in the Team Member Section. The responsibilities were assigned were based off interests of the group members.
- Initial experimentation with Android and Java Environments
- Began research of campus buildings / facilities
- Contact about obtaining data from past design projects to assist in creation of project.
Tucker Gemberling
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