Puget Sound Pollution App

In this project I am designing an app that is use for collecting datas from the people, which is so called the citizen science. Scientist and data collectors don’t always reach every single area or field. Therefore, citizen science became an important bridge of connection where people get to help researchers who needed the datas. My topic was to specifically design for the water quality of the Pudget Sound area. Also, I have to design the app thinking about the input part for the citizens and not the outcome part for the researchers or data scientists.

My partner, Abby Liu, and I decided to target on the water quality where people who does outdoor activities like camping, hiking, and swimming usually go. By that I mean designing an app that they could use to report any pollution they see as they are hiking on the mountains with streams near by, camping in the woods with rivers next to them, and swimming in lakes.

I am using an app called POP, Prototyping on Paper, that creates your own app simply by taking pictures of the design you draw and connecting them together in links.

Then linking all the pictures and drawings togther into an actual app that could be navigated.

Video for the app being reviewed on a computer (see below).

During this project I revised my drawings several times after I tested them out with a few friends. They gave useful feedbacks about what part they liked and what part they don’t like. For example, there are a few parts where they encounter difficulty going back to the previous page, for the reason that I didn’t include the “go back” button on the screen and they didn’t like the feeling of not being able to return. This problem was easy to fix just by adding the sign onto my drawings. However, there is a bigger issue is that POP doesn’t include the function of choosing multiple options or filling in the blank, and in real life there are situations where multiple things occur at the same time. In the end there are no ways to solve the problem without adding 1o more pages to the app and making it even more complicated; therefore, I kept some of the filling in the blank designs as an idea, but deleted the ones that ask the users to check multiple boxes. Instead of selecting multiple boxes I created the description textbox, where users can describe the scenario in words.

Overall, I really enjoy doing this project simply because I get to design my own app that actually works. Unlike last time where we work in groups, this project we are working individually in design, ideas, and video recording. I like the feeling how things can go my way, but I love the idea of working with others, listening to others ideas, and coming up with a more round off solution.