A FEW changes

I have now completed a simple demonstration of my application in flash, while creating it i have made a few minor changes from the post before about what each button will do etc, the following changes are as follows:

• The # has been changed from locating the best route to the zoom out button and the * key is still the zoom in button.
• The locating best route button has been changed to just pressing the select key instead of pressing the # key.

These are the on two changes ive made to my final peice.

Size matters

The screen size of my application will be important on how it will display the items i want it to display.

My Application Will be designed for the screen resolution of 160x 128 this is the largest size for mobiles phones, My application is aimed at only mobiles phones and not smart phones because smart phones are already capable of supporting route finders and things similar to this. and also the fact that there are more people with mobiles phones than smart phones.

On the screen i need to think about the following factors

• Text
• Positioning
• colour
  

Text

First i will talk about text. text is very important especially on small screens devises. one thing that is very important is " the smaller the type, the greater the selected contrast values should be. the brightness-contrast value should not fall below 50% for black and white text"(Designing for small screens, studio 7.5)

It is important also not to use Serif fonts for small screens as its allot harder to read the text, so for my application i will be using San serif fonts and only using 1 type of sanserif font so the users are familiar with the text and don't get confused with all different types.

It is important to make the text stand out with a non clashing background for example if you had pink writing with a light green background these two colours will clash especially on a small screen so it would be more sensible to use colours that compliment each other like black and white.

Positioning

When it comes the the positioning of the items in my application i want to keep everything very simple so the user doesn't get distracted. i want it to get right to the point so it will take you less than 5 minutes to find what you are looking for.

I will be using the law of symmetry so everything is equal and wont mess with the human tendency of perception everything will be balanced and harmonious. but in some cases this rule can be broken for the attention of an icon to be focused on more than the rest for example if you are in a selection menu the selected icon my be off centered so you know you have highlighted that icon. All my text, graphic boxes and windows will be centered so that the balance is equal.

Colour

I will keep the colour of my application very simple as its not the main aspect of my application
i will use colours such as black, white and grey and make sure i avoid colours such as red and blue so for the users who are colour blind can see what the text says.

The text will always be either black with a white background or white with a black background because they compliment each other and don't clash! this is a major aspect as i know how annoying it is when two colour clash.


The Price is right!

For the final part of this post I'm going to talk about price and to take into consideration of other products and how much they are.
I went to http://www.youpark.com/ and had a look at the prices of each applications and they seamed to vary allot. i had a look at this particular application which is a GPS navigation for the modern mobile phones and noticed the price which was 13.22 pounds. this gave a basis on the highest price i could sell it for. My application doesn't have as extensive features as that application but i though it would be appropriate to sell my application for 4.99 i chose this price as this is the average amount most applications/ games sell for on on the Internet so i thought it would be sensible to keep it the same otherwise people wouldn't buy it.

Thats it for this post

Finalized ideas


In recent days ive been thinking about my idea and that its lacking a good selling point because at the moment it doesnt really do much other than find petrol stations. my aplication is aimed at the 3rd generation of mobile phones such as k800i, G600 and w850i which have full capability of gps and the internet. My mobile application is also design for the use of Java so it will be comptaible with these phones.The list below shows what i have decided to add to my application and how it would work.

• The main part of my application is to find the nearest petrol station to you in the area you are in. This will work by using GPS To connect your mobile to the internet server which will provide the information.

• I will include the functionality of having my application to tell you how much fuel a paticular station has left which an icon that will show up. Green = Alot Yellow = Running out and Red= Out of pretrol.

• From my original design of having to type in details i will scrap that idea and have my application use GPS to locate your position saving alot of time this will make it alot more user friendly and a better selling point the only thing you would bee to type in is the range in mile a selection from 5,10, 15 or 20 miles radius.

• I want to combine Google map with my application. This will work with Gps so once the application has located your position. A map much like google map will appear and The petrol stations will appear on the map with an arrow showing thier location.
  

• The naviagtion of the map is simple, using the directional pad on the front of the mobile phone will navigate around the selected area the petrol stations will have a number by them and if you press a number on the Number pad it will display the information nect to the station

• Pressing a number on the number pad will bring up information which will include, the exact address, how many miles away from your position it is and also display an icon for the amount of petrol they each have and i also want to display what times the particular petrol station opens and shuts but that will be quite difficult because each petrolstation will have to upload information.
  

• by touching the directional pad on the front of the mobile phone will make the information of the Previous petrol station selected dissapear showing the view of the map. and will enable the user to continue scrolling to find other petrol stations.
  

What do the buttons do?

• The # key will set the best route to the location of the petrol station, which is also combining The idea from " The route finder" on Sat nav but in a much simpler form.
  

• The top left Soft key is the enter button which will enable you to start the application and select any information

• The top right soft key is the back button to take you to the previous page and if held down will take you to the options menu.

• The directional pad is used to navigate the map and if pressed will continue to navigate the map if a number on the d pad is pressed

• Each petrol station will have a number next to it and if you press the corrisponding number to the petrol station it will display information about that petrolstation. press the D pad to continue on searching.

• only if needed press the * key and it will pop up with a box that will enable you to type double digets if there is more than 10 stations in the area.

Options menu

In the options menu there will be a few selection stating with

• Reset, this button will reset all information in the application to default settings
• Sound, this button will enable sound to be played for button noises etc,
• Mile radius, click this button and you get a selection of the amoun of mile to choose from, 5,10,15 or 20 miles. Default is 5 miles
  
• Exit, this button enables you to exit the application

For now this is the outline of my application of what i want it to do and what each button does. the only other thing that my application requires is a connection the the internet and a GPS enables mobile phone.

Devloping my idea

Today i have been putting together my presentation on my fuel price idea, i did find it quite hard in some parts trying to produce a semi work example of my application but it seamed to work ok.

The point of this post it to elabirate a bit more on my idea.

First things first ive decided to ditch the idea of having an option to see weather a specific petrol station had desil and petrol avaliable as i found it rather difficult for my application to find out or not, there were a few ideas but there were alot of flaws like HOW WOULD my application be able to tell if a petrol station had fuel. as each petrol station would have to upload information to a server for my application to access it and work out how much from the information given. and i doubt it would have access to that sort of information. for legal reasons etc, etc, but other than that my application has potential by combining google map with petrol price websites, a very handy tool indeed,

I did have a few problems with flash so i had to change my idea slightly for example, instead of a drop down list of counties and towns i have a text box where u type in your county and town, this was rather anoying as it would look alot more professional mabe in the future if i develop my idea alot more this sort of thing i could do. also if you made a spelling mistake it wouldnt pick it up, which would have made the drop down box better as you could only select the ones in the box and these would definatly work default. i intend for my application to use GPS (global positions system) and pinpoint your location, all you have to do is type in certain information so the online server finds the petrol stations.

Any more information i have i will post next time,

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas please let me know. even if they are negative it will help me to develop it even further.

THE SCREEN

I recently purchased the book "desgining for small screens" and im looking at screen sizes and screen resolutions heres a quote " it can be said that the higher the resolution is, the smaller the rendering of the graphical elements" aslo " screens are defined by both their physical size and the number of pixels they can display". the maximum screen size for a mobile phone is 160x128 anything higher than that would be used for smart phones or the latest touch screen phones which start at 220x 176 or 240x 160 for my application im going to try and aim for the smaller mobile phones as touch screen and smart phones have less of a market range where as mobiles such as, k800i, nokia n95 etc have a larger market range. this will definatly change as touchscreen phones become more popular. but it aslo depends on the dpi (dots per inch) which will make the screen size smaller the higher the dpi range is. for example if you had a 128 x 128 pixel screen you coul dmake it look the same size as a 64 x 64 pixel sreen by having the dpi to 144 dpi. in other words u can have a smaller screen but with high dpi means u can fit more contents on the screen than with higher pixel ratio with a low dpi.

i recomend reading " design for small screens"

The new year is here!!!

Befor i start this post i must apologyse for not posting since last year as ive been unable to access the internet with technical difficulties from my service provider

Ideas

I was researching on pretol prices and looking around the web to see if there were any petrol pricing and find your nearest petrol station websites and a found a few, i think now that petrol is becomming so expensive these days that there has been an increase in this sort of thing.
It made me remember, the day befor new years eve me and a few mates were off to cardiff for new years and it took us ages to find a petrol station that had any petrol in it, so after a while of thinking about it i decided to go ahead with my idea about producing a mobile phone application that will find the nearest petrol station to my location and 1. tell me the price per litre of petrol and 2. to see if they actually had any in stock. i was looking around and here a few websites that search around the united kindom for petrol stations in different counties.


http://www.ufindus.com/petrol_stations
this website doesnt just find petrol stations in your local area but anything you want.

http://www.touchlocal.com/business/search/typeId/1446/type/Petrol+Stations+&+Forecourt+Shops
here is another website that does exactally the same thing as the first one.

http://www.petrolprices.com/
and here is another one which in my opinion is the best as it is really easy to use.

I found all these websites but nothing to do with petrol pricing for mobile phones so im guessing noone has made one yet. but using a route finder on a sat nav or on an iphone you will be able to find out but what about those people who dont own one of these gadgets?.... this is where i inted t to help those people out.

My next post will have a few rough drafts of my ideas and how i would plan it out.