CT124-3-2 Mobile Technology Research & App Development Assignment

Objective

This assignment has been designed for students to provide necessary experience in understanding the use of mobile technology to improve real world processes through new mobile services.

Learning Outcomes

1. Perform different types of generative research studies related to mobile applications (A5, PLO9)
2. Construct novel mobile applications and assess their usage in real life (C6, PLO2)

Assessment

An individual project weighted at 50%

Coursework Description

Part 1 – Generative Research Study

You will conduct a field study in your domain of interest. The goal is to obtain key insights that are grounded in real-world behaviours for identifying possible applications and services to create in your mobile system development. You will collect a variety of data using multiple research methods during your field study.

Research Questions: You should begin with the research questions for your research. What do you need to know beyond your existing secondary research to understand how people approach your topic area today? Cover the appropriate breadth and depth to gain the understanding needed to design your app.

Participant Selection: Participant recruitment is extremely important in generative research.  You must choose the kind of people who will give you most insight into your research questions and could be potential users of your ultimate system. This likely means that your participants might not be fellow students and you might have to approach different set of participants. Enumerate criteria that will help you identify a range of behaviours and attitudes with respect to your domain.

Research Methods: Use interviews and at least one additional research method with each of your participants to answer your research questions. Try to combine qualitative and quantitative methods to fully understand your domain.

1. Qualitative Methods
   • Interviews: Asking people about specific recent times they did something in your domain area and understanding details of those interactions. This method is required for your assignment.
   • Observation: Watching people perform tasks in your domain of interest.
   • Home/site tours: Having people guide you through their places of interaction in your topic area.
2. Quantitative Methods
   • Diary logging: Having people keep a log of times/places/situations where they do something you are interested in.

Research study: Perform a study with at least 3 to 5 people using the methods you have selected. Take pictures of your participants and their environment as it pertains to your domain (with permission). Audio record (with permission) your session so that you can pull out quotes later.

Direct quotes & observations:  After interviewing your participants, take notes on post-it notes, noting the exact quotes of what your participants say or direct observations of what they are doing.  You do not need to write down everything, just the statements that pertain to the research questions. Do not (yet) try to analyse what they are saying or doing, just write exactly what is said or done. Also create note cards for any diary entries that the participants gave you or direct observations from home/site tours.

Participant profiles: Create a 1-page interview summary per participant with pictures. If the participant prefers to be anonymous, change the name and use a blurred photo for the profile picture.

A note on informed consent: You should inform your users about the study prior to starting the interview or diary study.  Make it clear that all names will be anonymized, that this study is for a class project, and that there are no anticipated risks for participating.  If you are audio/video recording, make sure they know that. Also make it clear that they can stop or skip a question at any time if they are uncomfortable.

Affinity Analysis: Perform an affinity analysis on the data that you collected in your study.  It should have three levels of hierarchy: the first and lowest level is the exact quotes or observations from your participants. The second level should be a first-person sentence summarizing the (generally 3-5) notes below. The top level should be a more declarative statement about user behaviour.  Create design ideas directly grounded in your data.  You should be able to easily come up with 10+ application ideas that can be directly inspired by the data you collected and themes that you found.

Part 2 – Mobile System and Supported Documentation

You are required to create a mobile application based on the design ideas extracted from your generative research.  The implementation scenario must not deviate from the research area adopted in your generative research.

The mobile application must satisfy the following requirements:

1. The mobile application should be capable of solving the problems identified in the design ideas.
2. Suitable user interface with the following items:a) Navigation ease
   b) Appropriate use of text formatting and images
   c) Fitness of purpose and appropriateness of material
   d) Consistency between all screens
3. Business logic (certain transactions/ data manipulations) should reflect the scenario supported by mock-up screens where it’s not possible to entirely implement required operations
4. Applied Frameworks / SDK APIs for both development and testing

Requirements

The marks allocation of the assignment is divided into five parts; 30 marks are allocated to the project proposal (generative research and supported proposal documentation) , 14 marks for the report (problem solving and design) to accompany the application, 35 marks for the developed mobile application, 14 marks for the mobile app testing and 7 marks for the App Demo.

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