DECO - designing comfort

This semester’s design task of the Human Computer Interaction seminar at DECO was to create, prototype and evaluate a location-aware mobile application that solves one of two given problems:

- Education & Research: How can mobile applications enhance the experience and support people in the fields of education and research?

- Green Living: How can mobile applications support and encourage people to reduce their negative environmental impact?

Seven teams of three students each completed the seminar, resulting in creative and useful mobile applications. The horizontal prototypes, used for the evaluation, were implemented with various tools, including App Inventor and Sencha Touch. However, most of the teams decided to develop native applications using the iOS and Android SDKs.

We proudly present the mobile application concepts of our seven participating student teams:

Freece – an app to support Freecycling between people
Questo! – a location-based social quiz game
Meet’n‘Eat – a cook pooling application
Time Travel – an app to go back in time and learn about the past
vRalley – an app for pupils, students and tourists to explore cities
VocAPPulary – a picture based vocabulary trainer
Tools4Rent – an app to rent tools that are not often used

Note that most screens contain static data used only for the evaluation of the prototypes. The applications are (also if stated otherwise) not available on any store at the moment.

Freece

Martin Keiblinger, Christian Kondler, Michael Schöndorfer

The Android App „Freece“ is a mobile smartphone application which supports the free exchange of no longer used goods between people, called Freecycling.

Similar to other services that support the exchange of goods between people, the main use case for this app can be described as follows:

User A has an article that is not needed anymore. Instead of throwing it away, User A uses the app to add the article to our service. User B is currently searching for such an article and applies for it. User A accepts the application and User B gets the notification that he can come by and collect it.

The app users have to register once on a central server. After registration, all use cases can be accomplished by using only the app.
The home screen of the app includes a dashboard that enables the user to directly execute the following tasks:

- Search for an article by using a Google Maps view which shows offered articles nearby using map overlays
- Discover articles by using the list search which supports dynamic filtering
- Offer an article to other users by adding photos, description etc.
- Track articles watched/offered by yourself
- Track articles which you have applied for

Some additional features:

- Get more information about an article by using the details view (user rating, article description, location, pictures)
- Search by Google Maps View also includes a list view that shows the articles nearby sorted by their distance related to your current position

The app was developed native using the Android SDK by following the official Google Design Guidelines for Android App Development. The main focus was to design a consistent user interface that is intuitive and easy to handle.

Video: Freece on vimeo

Questo!

Manuel Maly, Rudolf Mildner, Petar Petrov

Questo is a location-based social quiz game giving you the possibility to learn great things on the fly. If you are at a new place or simply passing by this beautiful old building every day on the way to work, just start Questo and take a quiz about this place.

The medieval style of the user interface provides an unique user experience and helps you dive into the world of knowledge.

If you want to know something about castles from the middle ages, the Eiffel Tower or Mozart you can just take a quiz in a related location on the map and collect points for each correct answer… without standing up from your couch. Questo will give you feedback and help you find out the correct answers in a easy and fun fashion.

You know a great interesting fact about the Grand Canyon? Just find it on the map and create a new question for other users to try.

If you want to show your friends how much you’ve learned, just invite them to Questo and challenge them to a tournament to see who knows it all.

Don’t believe us, try it yourself!

Video: Questo! on youtube

Meet’n‘Eat

Alexander Bachinger, Bernhard Efler, Gerhard Lamprecht

Do you sometimes experience any of these situations:

Emptying your fridge and throwing food that’s past its expiration date into the garbage?

Coming home late and realizing there’s no real food at home when shops are already closed? (even worse on weekends)
Realizing that while that lasagna (or any other food, really) was really tasty when you made it, but isn’t so grand if you eat left-overs 3 days in a row?

Well, there’s help for you: Meet’n’Eat, a cook pooling application, brings people together.

Find someone to eat with any time, any place; invite friends for free or strangers for monetary compensation; and get invited in return.
It’s easy to use, give it a try, whether you are searching for vegetarian food near your place of residence or a blind date near your workplace, you can’t go wrong with Meet’n’Eat.

Hosting a meal is just as simple, set the time, number of guests and give it a title, and optionally invite friends, turn it into a private event, set a price or write a description.

Accept or decline invitations and applications, who is visiting you or where you go to is yours to decide. Rate people afterwards to tell the world what a great/awful host/guest others are.

Use Meet’n’Eat to find a meal after working late again, or to organize a picknick among friends. Meet a lonely stranger or find someone to share lactose-free recipes with.

Download today, free to use, nothing to lose. Meet’n’Eat, bringing people together since 2011.

Video: Meet’n‘Eat on vimeo

Time Travel

Oliver Erhart, Michael Franzl, Alexander Mänchen

Have you ever wondered what happened in the past, on a location you were wandering by? Like at the Stephansdom or the Parlament? Now it’s possible!

With the Time Travel app you can go back in time and learn about the past.
On the map you can see all important spots where you can travel back in time. You don’t need a tourist guide for finding interesting locations anymore – the Time Travel app does this for you.

If you’re out of range from one of these spots you can see the details of this spot, the count of its events, as well its ratings from other users. With this information in mind, you know if this location is worth a visit.

Once you decide to go back in time, you can easily slide and swipe between historical events represented as images. If you find an interesting entry, just tap on it to see the most important information about it. After your brain is full of information be sure to rate that location.

Never ever sitting at home and learning history on the internet through Wikipedia & co. Take a trip and have a view through your iPhone at the distant past of dozens of locations. Your body will thank you for that.

Video: Time Travel on youtube

vRalley

Stefan Csizmazia, Johannes Hartl, Thomas Seif

vRalley is a fully interactive Android App supporting custom scavenger hunts for pupils, students, tourists and whoever likes to explore cities in an exciting and modern way. Forget boring hours of guided walks following an umbrella! Let vRalley show you new places and use it for learning new stuff about them. Every rally contains multiple exercises that you solve by visiting a specified place. Once you arrive at a place, try to answer the questions each exercise may ask you. For every exercise you can take notes, make pictures and record video and audio clips – all in one place, so you can find it easily afterwards. Distance and direction indicators as well as fully integrated Google Maps help you navigating wherever you are.

Video: vRalley on vimeo

VocAPPulary

Vanja Bisanovic, Simon Ludwig, George Sabau

vocAPPulary is one of the first (or maybe even better) picture based vocabulary trainer for elementary school kids and newbies of all ages. Try to think back and remember of your own childhood and time at the elementary when you had your first contact with a foreign language. How horrible it was when the teacher put you write down masses of vocabulary in senseless-seeming pairs of words with its translations and so on.

Now we’ve got the right thing/APP for all those people out there trying to learn a foreign language (e.g. English). All you need now is an Android Smartphone and our APP called vocAPPulary. We built our APP true to the motto “a picture paints a thousand words”. Our lections are built and work on this principle. Every word/term is represented by a picture showing and representing it’s meaning.

Download the latest and most recent lectures or even better create your own lecture with words you might need for tomorrows English class repetition. If you want to go for something more social just scroll through your phone’s contact list and challenge one of your class mates on a special subject. Is this still not comfortable enough for you? Well, if you don’t like typing use speech recognition for completing the small lection quizzes.

There are so many possibilities although learning shouldn’t be this fun! But … what if?

Video: VocAPPulary on vimeo

Tools4Rent

Bartosz Dobosz, Tomasz Irla, Kamil Sierzant

With the Tools4Rent app you can browse, rent and easily put your tools that are not often used. You can manage your tools4rent account and check the state of your tools where ever you are. Simple, convenient and easy to use tools sharing app.

Key features:
- Search, watch and rent a tool.
- Review Item details
- Rate the users
- Save your money and time
- View tools history for re-rent tools.

Tools are divided into 6 categories:
- Garden
- House-Tools
- Event
- Computer
- Electronic
- Other

The goal of the app is optimal use of resources (packaging, consumption) to reduce production and save environment. There is a lot of tools which are use very rarely. The production of such Tools cost a lot of money and is not environment friendly. This app should also help people to put that Tools which they are not use very often and be fair with environment. Other people can find rent the tools. An important benefit is that the app show the search results on a map and give a approximate distance between your location and the tool that you are searching for.

Video: Tools4Rent on youtube