Let’s face it. Waking up in the morning having slept nowhere close to enough hours is not an easy task. Having an app that wakes you up with a combination of light and smooth sounds has served me right over the past couple of weeks. Furthermore, the heavily gesture-based interface makes it cool to set up alarm clocks. Beautiful minimal design, nice typography, and “Clear”‘s alarm clock cousin does a nice job as an alarm clock app. Quoting the app’s website:

Two hundred years waking up hitting an alarm clock, what if we do something new? Try our application. It is called Suno (“sun” in esperanto), and it uses light for waking you up in a smooth way, preparing you for the day. You can select how you want to wake up by setting the light intensity and adding natural sounds to reinforce the process if you feel particularly lazy.

With Suno, your device’s screen becomes a beautiful dawn. Half an hour prior to the time set to wake up, Suno activates your smartphone screen and brightens the room gradually with a soft light, just like dawn. While you are still sleeping, the light gently prepares your body for the awakening. If you set the time to wake up at 8:00 am, the light will begin to increase gradually from 7:30 am. at 8:00, the light will reach its highest level, which can be adjusted according to your preferences. At the set time, your body will be prepared and the natural sounds will accompany the light. You will wake up feeling good.

http://www.nizolab.com/#!suno-app/c1otv

https://vimeo.com/59836941

http://bjango.com/mac/skalapreview/

Hands down the best preview software i found for prototyping on your phone, it uses one of the hidden features of photoshop to send the contents of your mockup to the phone at the correct size almost in real time.

After having users test my application some the suggestions included:

1. Confusion between the LIST tab and FAVORITES tab.

2. Tabs should be present in ever screen

3.Search buttons should be on all screens

4.Typing in the ingredients and choosing how many miles should be in their own page…just put it in with the map screen.

5. Separate List view and Map view

https://openpaths.cc 

This App tracks your location data and lets you access from the browser or download it to make interesting data visualizations like this one that i made for bootcamp.

Digital prototyping with the use of POP application was really helpful and Maya’s test drive of the app made me decide to simplify some aspects of the interface

Feed backs to improve for next round are:

– to eliminate the calender interface and just to show the date we are in.

– Changing the home page

I love to try food from different cultures. I’ve always thought it would be fun/nice/helpful to have a map where I record where the food I eat originates, which is how my idea for this application was formed. By making it a mobile app rather than a printed map, I and other people like me will be able to include details about the meal, access the map on the go, learn about the food/culture before trying it, and more. I initially considered adding a feature that will locate a nearby restaurant based on the type of cuisine desired, but I decided to keep the app simple because someone can always open another app to find a restaurant. Of course no city will have food from every country, and people who live in areas without access to diverse food will have trouble populating their map. This app is more likely for a New Yorker obsessed with trying all kinds of food, but even a New Yorker will have to travel to complete some of the countries on the map. Part of the fun will be in seeing which countries you can complete when you travel to a new place. In a future iteration, I may add in the option to highlight which countries you can complete based on your location. Maybe the first person to complete the map will get a reward.

To start my project, I made an app map and a set of wireframes that you can see here.

After a round of user testing in class and feedback from classmates during my presentation, I modified the wireframes to include filters based on flavor profiles or by continent, a settings page, added a search ability to the map view, removed a button that didn’t go anywhere, added the pages for logging a new meal, and further developed the cuisine info and etiquette pages.

My first attempt at a design mockup was weak. I’m not a very visual person. But after some feedback from classmates and from graphic designer friends, I redesigned everything and made a lot of improvements.

 Here is my final presentation PDF. 

updated wireframes

Before creating on to the design process I’ve updated the wire frames for the Treat App.After the critiques I’ve received, I’ve simplified the wire frames. I’ve modified the tab bar so that, users would be on one of those tabs each time. I got rid of the back button on the tab bar, and located it in a different place. There are four folders on the tab bar: Recipe Box, Ornament Box, Shopping List and Home Page.I’ve also modified the home page because, the former one didn’t really served as a home page. Home page is the first page that is showing today’s date and the  upcoming holidays, so that you would click on that holiday and see it’s recipes.

I’ve also changed the logo appearance on every page, the logo appears only on the home page.

Recipe Box leads you to a page where you can find categorized treat recipes. Cupcakes, muffins, cakepops, smooties, jellos .. For instance if you click on the cupcakes category, it leads you to a page full of cupcake images where you can scroll left and right to see more images. To see the recipes of those images the user will click on the image thumbnails.

I was also questioning the necessity of the tab of “ornament box”. But I want to keep it. Because decorating cakes and sweets can be difficult, and some tricks on how to create them is helpful. “Ornament Box” tab leads you to a page that lists: icing, whipped cream, candy melts.. where you can learn how to create icing for a cake, or how to melt a candy.

Adding items to the shopping list can be done from it’s page and also from the recipe page. On the recipe page ingredients will have an “add to shopping list” option. To erase the items you should be on the shopping list page.

I’D LIKE TO EAT is a mobile app for finding NYC restaurants with menus that accomodate those with certain dietary restrictions.  The app simply and elegantly displays the information a user with a dietary restriction needs to comfortably eat out.  I’D LIKE TO EAT was created by Mani Nilchiani and Maya Weinstein