GroupBrainstorm-Group:TeamDeca
From CS 160 Fall 2010
Contents |
Group members
Brainstorm ideas
1. Poker Game 2. keeps track of poker chips 3. Expense tracker 4. Contacts tracker 5. Bug tracker (however best with laptop) 6. School tracker 7. Inventory Tracker 8. Nutrition tracker 9. Vehicle Maintencance Tracker 10. Issue Tracker 11. Anything tracker 12. Can use Google Forms 13. Overhead of defining fields 14. Some field types are not supported, such as date field types 15. Can Google Forms work easily in a handheld phone? 16. The fields of Google forms seem shifted too far to the left of Android phones. 17. Not where there is no internet 18. still spend extra time zooming in and out 19. Google Forms are not exactly engineered for mobile phones 20. Idea still too broad - narrow target market 21. Fisherman Tracker 22. For fishing companies with a fisherman for each boat who speaks English 23. Google can translate forms on laptops because they are on internet. 24. Does google translate work with mobile phones? 25. Track how many fish caught 26. Track where fish where caught 27. Track when fish were caught 28. Track what conditions fish were caught in 29. Track which Boat that caught the fish 30. Tracking boat easily do with drop-down list not possible in Google Forms 31. See screenshot below 32. Form is emailable, so app requires no additional overhead of installation, bookmarkable 33. With Google Forms, different fishing companies need to create their own form 34. Can use the same form if only pay attention to their own boat 35. Do fishermen have internet access (ex. WiFi) from a boat? 36. Maybe not - a market of boats that cannot afford wifi at sea to consider building a custom app for 37. Therefore will we have to make an app that runs locally on web phone? 38. App will synchronize from the internet once ship returns to shore. 39. Ship could radio in amount of fish caught to someone on a land who has Wifi, and thus access to the Google Forms internet version. 40. or Fishermen could temporarily write the data down in a form that we provide to them, when they are at sea. 41. When the ship returns from sea, then they could use the Google Form to enter in the data via the internet. 42. There are advantages to having data on internet bound. (Expense to get Wifi@sea for each fishing ship pays off) 43. Based upon old and new data, a central manager could target old areas that worked to redirect ship to. 44. Centralized data live helps fishing companies be centrally strategic (effective top-down management) 45. Fishing companies might still want to rely on experience of fishing boat crew people (bottom up) 46. To effectively decide between top-down vs bottom up fishing navigation might need an additional field (whose idea it was to fish there), which increases complexity 47. Where to put fishing company in the form? 48. For now, a separate form for each fishing company 49. Forms might have to be customized for each company. 50. Internetless mobile app version to be customized after successful Google Form trials. 51. Mobile app could automatically fill in the boat, when, and where based upon GPS data. 52. An eBay price tracker that allows users to see the current trends of specific items being sold on eBay. Sellers on eBay tend to rely on these data found on third party websites to fix a price for their items being sold and decide which items are hot at the time. 53. An offline database of business establishments along with their addresses and phone numbers. A lot of smartphone users have unlocked their phones and are no longer on data plans. When they are on the go, many of them don't have access to the internet, but frequently need to know the phone number and address of, lets say, a restaurant. The application will be similar to a yellowpage directory, but it'll additionally enable users to search by name, view in alphabetical order or by location - e.g, by zipcode or city. The database can be updated when the user is online. 54. OnMyWay, integrated with phone to share GPS location and direction/speed at the press of a button. For example, I send a text to a friend saying "just left Soda" and then press a button. my GPS info will be shared with the friend for the next 30 minutes (or a more intelligently selected time) so they can accurately see when I'm arriving. 55. Bike safety map. When used with lots of users, people can track locations and times where bikes/parts were stolen, to determine which locations are safer. 56. Using some existing online database, create flashcards to help people learn english. Or integrate with news articles so they can select any words, and with a press of a button or two, add it to their virtual deck of flash cards. The flashcards will have english and native-language definitions. 57. Inventory of personal items. Uses the device's camera (so much for archos...) to take pictures of items, and tag the location. User can define locations, and then take pictures of items that are in that location, and later on (from a computer for ease of use) name/tag the items. 58. Scan food items to have the phone keep track of diet. Obviously this would not work for dine-in locations and meals. Only works for items with UPC, and will require a huge and reliable database of all food items. 59. Allow upload of fishing photos 60. Publish fishing log/photos to a website 61. Upload photos to facebook
Idea Selection
The key to success is only adding features as the users request them. For now, especially during prototyping, we're staying with Google Form tracking Boat name, where fishing occured, # of fish caught, start-end time of fishing, conditions. Later where internet is not accessible, we might make a mobile app that stores data locally while at sea.
Description
This project will allow mobile phone users, regardless of the mobile os platform, to track how many fish they have been catching, where, when, and under what conditions. This data will be useful to fishing companies to know where to fish next (smart fishing), and for accounting purposes. The prototype will use Google Forms, which works not only on any handheld web browser, but on any laptop. Later where internet is not accessible at sea, there will possibly be a mobile app that stores data locally until the ship returns to shore where there is internet access.
Target User Group
The target user group is fishing companies who have workers who understand english on each ship, trying to track how many fish they have been catching. Ideally, the app would work from the web browser, so the users need either an iPhone, Android, another handheld device with web browsing capability, or a laptop. There are services that allow internet access from at sea (http://www.landandseawifi.com/), so the user would need to get internet access for each ship. The market of ships that cannot afford Wifi at sea is a smaller market to consider building a custom app for. However, for now, while we refine what fields are needed, the users will be workers on boats that have WiFi (The link to the Form is easily emailable out to fishermen at sea)
Problem Description & Context
Fishing companies need to know where/when/how many fish they have been catching in order to know where to return to for fishing next. Also, they may need that data for accounting purposes (to know how much revenue to expect). They could capture the data using Google Forms, specifying how many, where, when, what conditions they where caught in. Then they would be able to easily identify the areas that resulted in the most fish caught and return to those areas later. However, internet access might be too expensive for each ship. Should we consider making a custom Android app for them? What if they are iPhone/laptop carriers only?
Why is a mobile app a good solution for the problem?
A mobile app is ideal for a forms tracking tool, because it can gather data from the spot, where the action that is important to track occurs, and especially with a local app if internet is not available. Whereas laptops might not be protable to the location where fish are counted, a mobile app might be. There is still the limitation that using Google Forms might not be available to every fishing boat because they might not have wifi at sea. In this case a mobile app is also the preferred solution because it can still capture the data locally for later upload to the internet. Plus the GPS capability could auto-fill-in the (Where) data.
Screenshots
Here is a direct link to the prototype form seen above, runnable from an Android, and on any web phone or laptop: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG1NZUFma2ZkY3o2bzhLSUFaeWJEeEE6MQ
Following is the spreadsheet where all the data is visible to the fishing company: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tmMeAfkfdcz6o8KIAZybDxA
