Computer Science Kiosk Melanie Othon Project Definition Develop

Computer Science Kiosk Melanie Othon

Project Definition ★“Develop an interactive application that showcases the computer science major. ” ○ “It should be informative, visual, tangible, interactive, and fun” ○ Include a game that quizzes and informs ★“The ‘CS KIOSK’ is intended to interactively tell students about computer science at SNC and demonstrate activities and projects

Decisions, Decisions ★Project description and requirements given, but a lot was still up to me ★Brainstorming ways to make it fun and creative ★Platform also up to me ★Ultimately, wanted to try something new ★Mobile development for me was

Learning Curve ★At first was afraid of Java and Android Studio ★Tried Xamarin for Visual Studio, bad experience, little documentation ★Pleased to find that Java was easy to pick up with C# experience ★Much initial confusion surrounding Android Studio & mobile development in general ★Constant googling until I started to Me the first 3 -5 weeks

Basic Outline / Solution ★Knew early on I wanted upper tabs for easy navigation ★Tabs include: ○ Home: ■ “students in action” - image slideshow ■ “Program gallery” - past program screenshots with descriptions ○ Info:

Basic Outline Cont. ★Tabs cont. ○ Meet the Students ■ Expandable. List. View widget to display student capstone websites throughout the years ○ Classes ■ Major requirements, and those descriptions ■ Concentrations and those class requirements and descriptions

Cyberspace Design ★Ultimately wanted to give users a reason to return to the app ○ Something besides information ○ An app is not very good if it’s for one time use ○ Enough questions to allow user to play several times with little repetition ★Created Lewis the Laptop for fun very early on ★Thought Cyberspace was a good

Cyberspace Behind the Scenes ★Essentials to the game: ○ Arrays containing questions and their respective answers (All organized in xml file) ■ 3 categories of arrays ● “All. Qs” - size of 14, containing string question ● “One. As”/”Two. As”/”Three. As” …. - size of 4, all string options for that specific question. Answer is at pos 0 ● “All. As” - size of 14, array containing the 14 arrays above

Cyberspace Behind the Scenes Cont. ★Essentials to the game cont: ○ Class of static vars ■ Keeping track of changing planet progression, LL’s battery percentage, and unused questions ■ Functions to reset these values upon restarting game ○ Class of planet values ■ Planet number values, their coordinates on the screen ★Planets expertly drawn by me in MS Paint

STOP. DEMO TIME

Strategies ★Stack. Overflow of course ★Android Developers site had lots of tutorials ★Generally any forum I could find that had a solution ------------------------------------- ★Getting started early on ○ Design ideas within first week ★Look at the code every week ★Never walk away from it broken

Knowledge ★Essential concepts: ○ Frequent functions, trying to limit spaghetti code ○ Classes, accessing data within ○ Event handling ★ CSCI 350 essential ■ C# → Java ■ Event Programming Actual image of me coding

Extensions ★“Futures” page ○ Showing where alums are employed, what they’re doing, etc. ★Game could always be improved ★More incentive to return to the app

Advice ★Start early of course ★Don’t leave it alone for more than a few weeks. Motivation drops ★The more progress you make, the more excited you are to work on it ★Someone somewhere has the answer. Don’t get discouraged

Questions? ? ? ? ?