During the past few weeks we’ve been working on the look & feel and design of the app. We have created our graphic design. This graphic design has a very simple, clean and familiar look. This is important because we do not want users to experience any surprising features.
Using these designs we created an initial prototype in Axure to understand the flow of events in the app. Axure is software that helps you create the skeleton of a website, or in our case an application. We call this skeleton the wireframe of our concept. In other words this wireframe is a digital version of our paper prototype. In this prototype we created links and made buttons clickable with hover effects. This UI (User-Interface) Design will be further developed when we are test it. It is an iterative process where our design will change based on feedback from the tests and viceversa until end-user and we are satisfied with the result.
A fun example where you can see the effects of a wireframe being transformed into a design is the one from the CNN website.
Some inspiring links for designing:
Android Developer
Another important step in our progress was finalising the developer for our app. We went through the process of interviewing a number of applicants and then deciding who would be the best fit for our group. It was a learning process as we were expected to ascertain whether all our requirements could be met while negotiating the quoted price for their services. After evaluating the applicants we decided to hire Brian as we liked his enthusiasm and gauged that he would be optimally involved with us.