Scenario
Goldman Press is a small book publisher based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. The company publishes a number of educational nature books for the UK market and are often used by students (aged 9-10) during school trips and site visits. The company recognises that many schools and students are now using smart-phones in the curriculum and hopes to develop a new mobile application to tap into this growing market. The company hopes to deploy this application to a variety of platforms including Android, iOS and Windows Phone in the future. The book publisher has asked you to develop a standalone prototype mobile application called ‘Digital Plants’, which will be trialled by a local school using Android mobile devices.
The company would like the prototype application to be used by children during field study work to identify plants, provide more detailed information and to record locations of plants in places of interest. Traditionally this has been done using a textbook and paper exercise sheets. Students usually work in pairs.
The company has asked that the prototype contain the following functional elements as a minimum:
- Quick browse – explore the plants stored in the application by name
- Browse by category – ability to browse plants based on an appropriate category (e.g. type, colour or species etc)
- Details – provide more information on each plant using a variety of text, video, images, audio and/or other multimedia elements
- Search – ability to search for a plant by name/partial name
- Advanced search form – refine results based on specific criteria (e.g. colour, type etc)
- Record a find - facility to allow the user to record finds and store this in the application together with the GPS location, title, and user defined description and an image (provided by the device camera)
- Export - ability to export all recorded finds via email (or other suitable method) once the student is back in the classroom
- About screen –general information about the application with web links to appropriate on-line resources for students and teachers.
The company have commissioned a professional photographer and copyrighter, but the material will not be ready in time for the trial. The company have indicated they are happy for you to source your own information, photographs, audio and video to demonstrate the potential features of the application. However, the application must be easy to use and appropriate for the target audience.
Questions:
• Short report that includes the following sections:
o Introduction
o User story
o Application structure (screen flow diagram)
o Explanation of core functionality – screenshot of each screen and explanation of functionality, rationale and approach you have taken
o Testing – a summary test plan for your application