Discussion - Tuesday 22/10 & Wednesday 30/10

After the exercise we used our current prototype to discuss the feedback and come up with some main problems that need to be solved.

• Internet connection requirements: The first and foremost problem is that online use is very limited to backpackers, and therefore we need to adjust the app so that it doesn’t require internet all the time. One suggestion is to limit the internet functionality in such way that you set up everything before you leave, e.g. if you have a Wifi-connection on the hostel. We are going to have an “Online Mode” and an “Offline Mode”, where the “quality of life” features (position tracking, notifications, etc) are disabled.
• Option to download the map: We discussed how the offline map mode should work. At first we thought about including the map download in the offline/online mode switch on the Settings screen, but then we looked at a bicycle app that Norbert had downloaded. In that app the user could choose an area of the map by dragging on the screen and then download that part of the map. We decided that we wanted to have a similar solution for our app, so we added that action to map screen. We then needed to figure out where exactly to put it.

• Menu bar: How to represent the menu bar was a big discussion. Our first design used a menu bar at the bottom of the screen to navigate between the different screens. When we wanted to add quickly accessible actions (downloading the map, for example), it didn’t really make sense to add them to that menu, since it would not be consistent to have both actions and navigations in the same menu. We thought about having a lateral menu that would slide in to display everything we want, since having more space would allow to properly explain everything. The problem then is that users would need one extra action for any navigation. A solution would have been to add extra gestures for navigation: swiping left or right to go to the next or previous screen. That solution is not that good because it’s not the result of the action is not obvious and knowing that the action itself is possible is not obvious either. Since we want the users to use easily the application, it’s not really acceptable. The easiest thing to do, both for us and for the users was then to add a button to the top status bar, that would display a menu with the actions relevant to the current screen
• Identifying other members of a public pub crawl: For a lonely backpacker, getting to the target pub is one thing, but being able to identify and join the members of the crawl is another one. We are considering a way to let users know when they are close to each other. The newcomer could press a button, and his phone and nearby member’s ones would ring and/or vibrate, allowing them to recognize each other. Since we are trying to keep the app as independent from the internet access as possible, it could on Bluetooth.