Mobile Design Issues

For this discussion I will be using a Samsung Galaxy S4 on the AT&T network, I will be testing speeds using both 4G LTE and Wi-Fi. In this discussion I will be reviewing the West Palm Beach Veterans Hospital website.



Not Accounting For Device Width

If you’ve ever used a mobile device to access websites you know the importance of that website accounting for device width. More popular websites like Amazon, Netflix, CNN, and so on offer websites that are fit for every device, meaning those sites account for all devices. Most of the popular websites also have sites designed specifically for mobile devices. The West Palm Beach VA’s mobile website does account for device width, but has not created a site designed for mobile devices. Basically the VA just displays a copy of the desktop version, although the text and images don’t overlap, I still find this very hard to use.  

Desktop Version

Mobile Version

Not Reconsidering Content

Like stated above using a desktop version of a website on a mobile device is difficult in some instances. Obviously using Luck Wroblewski’s “design for mobile first” methodology doesn’t apply here given the fact that the VA’s website has been around longer then smart devices but in today’s age major companies like the VA should offer a mobile website. The VA’s website is very informational, most of the time I can find the answer to my questions when searching the VA’s website, however using that same website on a mobile device makes getting answers a pain. The VA should consolidate their desktop website and make a mobile website. In my experience when I use my mobile device to access the VA’s webpage I am looking for specific things, like directions, phone numbers, etc. I think if the VA did some sort of research survey and asked what are the “must-haves” for a mobile site they could get a mobile site up and running.



Forgetting the Size and Limitations of a Finger

Again, since the West Palm Beach VA just uses a copy of their desktop site for their mobile site it makes the “touch screen” experience a difficult one. There are a number of drop down menus and different options to select from on the VA’s website, even with zooming in on a mobile device it is difficult to select some options. I have run into many errors when trying to access something using the mobile site, for instance, when I select a drop down item, I am unable to select from the sub menu. Again creating a mobile site could help alleviate some of these problems.

Error Menu

Load error

Long Page-Load Times: Too Many Images

The West Palm Beach VA’s website was designed for desktop use, the desktop version is done very well, it’s responsive and looks great. The problem is when accessing it on a mobile device it becomes “bogged” down by the slideshow and other various images on the site. On a 50 MB/s wired connection on using a desktop computer I was able to load the site in 9.14s, however when I tried on my Samsung Galaxy S4 using Wi-Fi it took 31.29s, using 4G LTE it clocked in at 56.11s. These test were done without using cookies. I disabled the images on the VA’s website and the times were reduced significantly, again this could be avoided by creating a mobile website.





Conclusion

With all that said I do realize that a site such as the West Palm Beach VA is very extensive and a mobile site would require a lot of time and money. However the growth of HTML5 and CSS3 makes it much easier for companies to create mobile sites and options like bootstrap allows companies an “all in one” option.

Introduction

In today’s discussion I will be reviewing Battlefield Hardline, personally I’ve played this game on the Xbox One console but it is available on multiple platforms. Battlefield Hardline is a first person shooter (FPS) game and its backbone is based on various “cops vs robbers” scenarios.

Game Summary

Battlefield Hardline was primarily developed by Visceral Games and was published by Electronic Arts (EA). Since the Battlefield series is very popular, the game can be purchased at many different stores (Walmart, Target, GameStop. etc.). With so many technologic advances in the digital gaming world in the last few years, consumers are able to buy Battlefield Hardline and digitally download it to their designed platforms. The standard version of the game is priced at $59.99 and the deluxe version of the game comes in at $69.99.  

The Battlefield series tends have a modern combat outline with its games, meaning the style of gameplay is based on current military operations such as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would seem the player base of the Battlefield series wanted something new and creative, thus we have Battlefield Hardline. Battlefield Hardline has two different types of playing styles, the single player campaign as well as multiplayer.    

Single Player Campaign

In my experience the Battlefield single player campaigns have been sort of a letdown, short and not so sweet. Battlefield Hardline single player campaign is based on cops vs drug criminals. The game has a 10 episode outline, in other words there are 10 missions to play in the single player campaign. The storyline is very bland and very predictable, “go do this then report back”, “collect x amount of items”, things of that nature. Each episode consist about 10-15 minutes of gameplay with another 5-15 minutes of cut scenes. The interface of the single player campaign is well designed, icons, maps, on screen text, etc., are all very well placed and not in the way of gameplay. Battlefield Hardline visits cities such as Miami and Los Angeles, the design of the scenery and buildings are very realistic. There are many different things going on in the game that require many types of sounds, Battlefield Hardline does an outstanding job with sound. For instance, if the user shoots a weapon in an open environment (like a field or desert), it would make a unique type of sound, if the user shoots the same weapon inside an enclosed area, something like a stairwell it would have a loud, muffled sound that would echo. Environment noise is also very well done. An example would be walking up to a few people having a conversation, as the user walks closer their conversation is louder and more clear, when the user walks away the conversation becomes soft and harder to understand. The use of controls is very polished, each button is easy to remember and easy to use. The visuals of the game is also well designed. For the most part the objects in the game tied in with the whole scheme of the game. In the journal, “Game Usability Heuristics (Play) for evaluating and Designing Better Games: The Next Iteration” the author describes the importance of enduring play, personally I found the single player campaign to be boring and repetitive with little desire to continue playing the single player campaign.

Multiplayer

Most people that have played the Battlefield series only play the game for its multiplayer game experience. The multiplayer game experience in Battlefield Hardline consist of multiple game modes that uses 16 vs 16 player matches or 32 vs 32 player matches format. Each game mode has unique features that differ from one another, one of the more popular game modes of Battlefield Hardline is “Conquest”. Conquest is basically like a capture the flag type of game, each team must take different points and hold the points to win the game. Another popular and new edition to the Battlefield multiplayer game mode is a called “Heist”. In Heist, the objective for the criminals is to rob a bank and take the money to a drop off point, whereas the cop’s objective is to stop the criminals from robbing the bank. The interface is much like the single player interface, it is very well designed and does not get it the way of gameplay. The multiplayer graphics seem a bit bland and not as detailed as the graphics in the single player campaign. Some of the controls are not “fine-tuned” for multiplayer, for instance, the user is able to jump or leap over small objects such as fences or chairs, in some cases the user isn’t able to jump over a rock that is smaller than a fence or a chair. The sound quality and the use of sound is just as amazing as it is in the single player campaign, the sound is just absolutely amazing. The controls of multiplayer could use some work, the user is able to set their designed “turn sensitivity”, however there isn’t an option to set a vehicle’s “turn sensitivity”. Use of objects is very well done in Battlefield Hardline multiplayer.

Game Review

Overall I like Battlefield Hardline and I think the $59.99 price tag is justified. Like many others who played the Battlefield series I bought the game for its multiplayer experience and find it very entertaining. In my opinion the single player campaign brings this game down, I would go as far as saying that not having a single player campaign would be better for future games. I really enjoyed the use of sound in this game, at times I was blown away and knew the amount of work the developers had put into the sound. For a   “next gen” game I found Battlefield Hardline lacking with the graphics

Targeted Audience

The targeted audience for Battlefield Hardline is people that like a first person shooter with a multiplayer experience. Battlefield Hardline is also for people that want large multiplayer battles on large maps as well as using teamwork to accomplish a common goal. Since Battlefield Hardline uses foul language I would assume it’s for people 18 or older.



Reference

Hardline. (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2015, from http://www.battlefield.com/hardline

Desurvire, H., & Wiberg, C. (2009). Game Usability Heuristics (PLAY) for Evaluating and Designing Better Games: The Next Iteration. Retrieved March 8, 2015, from https://sharklearn.nova.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_3946496_1&course_id=_208028_1

The Evolution

of Web

Development

for Mobile

Devices

Mobile device technologies have skyrocketed in the past 10 years, these technologies have created a much more efficient world that we live in today. Business are able to answer their customer emails right from their mobile devices, people are able to take pictures and share them across many social networks in almost any place in the world using their mobile device, there are many things a person can do when using a mobile device but one of the most important task is accessing web content. In order to do things like sending emails or accessing social media a mobile device must use the web.  In this discussion we will focus on the web side of mobile devices.



The Latency Problem

Mobile devices have significantly improved over the years, but at the same time so has desktop computers and laptops, with the increased capabilities of desktop and laptops comes more detailed web resources such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), JavaScript, images, and video. Most websites are designed with a desktop platform with a wired connection, wired latency platforms are usually associated with home networks or business networks, basically it’s an internet connection that travels directly between points. Since wired latency travels directly between points there is much less latency because there is less to get in the way of the requested data. Overall latency is stable when using a wired connection. Wireless latency is much different from wired latency, wireless latency connects to the internet using 3G, 4G, 4G LTE, or Wi-Fi. Using a wireless connection to connect to the internet can have much more latency than a wired connection, this is because the data used in these type of connections are sent and received through the air. Open air causes resistance as well as providing an open space for other sources of interference, such as, buildings, walls, radios, microwaves, etc.



Improving Web Performance

One way to improve web performance is to reduce the amount of HTTP requests, concatenating external JavaScript and CSS files into one file could save a lot of time and space when accessing the web. If possible combining many files into a single file could create a much more fluent experience. Overtime concatenating has evolved from processing at build time to processing at runtime, concatenating process using runtime can be achieved by using a content delivery network (CDN). Google has created Apache module called mod_concat, this module makes it much easy to concatenate files dynamically at runtime. The mod_concat module works by using a special URL format to download multiple files using a single request.

An example of mod_concat:

Another great way to improve web performance is to eliminate images. Having many images on a single web page could increase load time and cause performance issues. There are many ways to reduce or eliminate images, CSS3 which is the latest version of CSS has provided many ways to eliminate images. Up until recently adding extras to an image like shadows, rounded corners, etc., took quite a bit of work and time to achieve, now all the extras can be done using a few lines of CSS.  Improving web performance on mobile devices is especially important. One of the most common ways to improve web performance on mobile devices is to create a site with parameters for a mobile device and make the URL a mobile URL (m.URL.com).



Mobile Device Limitations

Like stated above most websites were created with desktop platforms, since latency isn’t really an issue for desktop websites, slow and expensive ways of creating a website was not really a concern. Web technologies have come a long way in the mobile device world, the growing demand of the mobile market has caused web technologies to adapt to the mobile platform and ultimately created a much more efficient way of accessing the web with mobile devices. With that there are still limitations with mobile devices that are taken into consideration, although mobile devices have become much more powerful in the recent years, battery consumption remains to be a problem. Mobile web platforms can be rich and full of animations but the cost of running those things could cause more power consumption, which is a problem for most people.



Conclusion

The article that was used for this summary was made in early 2013, since then there have been many innovations that have helped eliminate some of the problems that were address in the article. Wireless networks have increased significantly since early 2013, both speed and stability have started to match wired connections. Something the article does not discuss is bootstrapping. Bootstrapping makes the crossover from desktop web technologies to mobile web technologies very easy. Although battery consumption is still an issue we face in 2015, there are many ideas floating around that could help elevate the problem. Increasing the wireless range of the 4G LTE networks help battery consumption because the mobile device isn’t always searching for a signal. There are many other innovations that are being developed to help battery consumption. Overall the evolution of web development for mobile platforms have come a long way.


Reference:

Using mod_concat to Speed Up Start Render Times. (2008, August 1). Retrieved January 29, 2015, from http://www.artzstudio.com/2008/08/using-modconcat-to-speed-up-render-start/

Zakas, N. (2013). The evolution of web development for mobile devices. Communications of the ACM, 56 (4), 42-48. DOI:10.1145/2436256.2436269

“A persona is an imaginary representation of a user role” (Cohn, 2004, p. 38)



Website: www.theknot.com

“The Knot (www.theknot.com) is the Internet’s most-trafficked one-stop wedding planning solution. Founded in 1996 to offer a much-needed alternative to the white-gloved, outdated advice of the available etiquette experts, The Knot has quickly become America's leading wedding brand reaching out to millions of engaged couples each year through our award-winning website, books, magazines, and broadcast offerings.” (theknot.com)



Persona:

Name: Robert Sparrowk

Age: 27 years old

Occupation: Software Engineer

Robert is a 27 year old software engineer that works for the United States Navy, specially developing education software for the Marines, Air force, Navy, and Coast Guard. Robert graduated from the Palm Beach Atlantic University with a degree in Computer Science, before Robert started college he was in the Army for 5 years. Robert is proficient in the English language and understands some of the Arabic language. Robert enjoys creating web programs/websites, as well as games, he also likes to watch/participate in sports. Robert is getting married in May and does a lot of research, he likes to compare prices of weddings, cake designers, DJs, photographers and any other needs of a wedding.



Task:

Find wedding venues cake designers, DJs, photographers and any other needs of a wedding in South Florida or Central Florida.
Enter desired location by zip code and compares prices from requested results.
Create RSVP for wedding guests.
Use theknot.com to create an rsvp that will allow guests to say whether or not they will be attending the wedding.
Sign up for newsletter.
Stay up to date on the latest wedding trends and best prices by signing up for the newsletter.
Create gift registry.
Create gift registry that will allow wedding guest to purchase the bride and grooms requested gift.
Search for the best honeymoons.
Research the best honeymoons and compare prices.
Reference:

Cohn, M. (2004). User stories applied: For agile software development. Boston: Addison-Wesley.

TheKnot. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2015, from http://www.theknot.com/

Oculus Rift is a set of virtual-reality goggles that will work with your computer or mobile device. The screen displays two images side by side, one for each eye. A set of lenses is placed on top of the screen, focusing and reshaping the picture for each eye, and creating a stereoscopic 3D image. The goggles have embedded sensors that monitor the wearer's head motions and adjust the image accordingly. The latest version of the Oculus Rift is bolstered by an external positional-tracking accessory, which helps track head movements more accurately. The result is the sensation that you are looking around a 3D world. I am very excited about Oculus Rift, not only for gaming purposes but for general virtual-reality purposes.

I would just love if I was able to put on a pair of Oculus Rift googles and travel though space, or walk with dinosaurs, the Oculus Rift will open so many doors to the past, present, and future. Oculus Rift was announced in 2013 but was later sold to Facebook for $2 billion, at first I thought the idea of selling something like this to Facebook was a bad move, but now I think it was for the best. When Oculus rift was first announced the Dev kit was pretty expensive for the specs of the device, Facebook has made Oculus Rift much better and much more affordable. There have been a few dev kits of the Oculus Rift released but the consumer version is said to be released at the end of 2015 or early 2016. If I had to guess I would say the consumer version does in fact release at the end of 2015. Since Facebook bought Oculus Rift I see no problem with making this device into a mass marketable product, the other thing I think would be a cause for concern is the price tag.

Check out this video of the Oculus Rift

Phonebloks is a modular smartphone concept created and designed by the Dutch designer Dave Hakkens, primarily to reduce electronic waste. While Phonebloks is not the first attempt at modular design in a phone, it is notable due to the extent of its modularity and the attention and support it has garnered. By attaching individual third-party components (called "bloks") to a main board, a user would create a personalized smartphone. These bloks can be replaced at will to replace a broken blok, to upgrade an existing blok, or to expand the functionality of the phone into a specific direction. Bloks would be available in Blokstore, "an app store for hardware", where users could buy new and used bloks as well as sell back their old ones. (Wiki) I am very excited about Phonebloks, there are so many new technologic advances in the smartphone world and the advances are happening every day. With traditional smartphones most people sign a 2 year contract with their carriers to save money, this means unless someone wants to pay full price for another phone, they are stuck with the same phone for two years. 

I remember when I got the Samsung Galaxy S4, I was amazed and blown away (and switched from an iPhone) I felt like I wouldn’t need a phone in two year because the S4 was too amazing, then in a short year I got to mess around with the S5, again I couldn’t believe how much faster it felt in comparison to the S4. Phonebloks reminds me of deskop computers, we are able to buy computer parts and upgrade them when we want, traditional smartphones reminds me of gaming consoles (Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo Wii), we are very limited to what we can upgrade. Again with most new HCI ideas there are causes for concern. Most smart phone users want a lightweight, sleek design, something that is great to look at and easy to use. Phonebloks looks, well like blocks. It’s very “clunky” and pretty bulky. 

The whole idea behind Phonebloks is to allow users to upgrade their phone with the newest technologies without the need for buying an entire new phone. Phonebloks also wants to eliminate “electronic waste”, I don’t really understand how Phonebloks is going to achieve this, given the fact that the device with offer many different versions of the same parts to complete a customer’s smart phone. (i.e. camera, memory, ram, CPU, etc.) Overall I think the idea is an amazing one, I am excited to upgrade my phone whenever I want without having to break the bank to do it. In order make Phonebloks work I think the creators must come up with a more desirable design, something more sleek and lightweight, rather than a bulky. Also, I think there should be multiple versions of the smartphone (size, color, etc.) something that fits everyone needs. Phonebloks has a huge backing both financially and socially, however I don’t think we will see a marketable version of Phonebloks for another year/year in a half. I would go as far as saying Google will release their version before Phonebloks does.

Check out this video of Phonebloks

The Cicret Bracelet will be a water proof bracelet that displays your smart phone’s screen right on your skin, in other words it basically makes your skin a virtual touchscreen. The person using the Cicret Bracelet can read e-mails, play their favorite games, answer phone calls, check the weather, and do pretty much the same task as a smartphone. This idea is very exciting, however new innovations also comes with questions and concerns. Some of the major concerns include, “Will this device work if someone has hairy arms”, or “How will input lag be taken into consideration”? I am really excited about the Cicret Bracelet and the idea behind it, I think a device like this will be very helpful. 

As of right now (April 17, 2015) the Cicret Bracelet remains to be just an idea, the creators made a promotional video with the idea in late 2014 that was sort of deceiving. The promotional video showed a working version of the Cicret Bracelet and all of its functionalities, however it was later discovered that there wasn’t an actual prototype at the time. Recently the creators put out a prototype video, in my opinion it was a letdown. The company’s website states that the Cicret Bracelet will be available for purchase Q4 2015 or Q1 2016, however we are in the 4^th month of the year and I would guess the developer edition (if that even exist) will release no earlier than Q1 2016. The creators will need much more funding and a better working prototype in order to make the Cicret Bracelet work.

Check out this video of the Cicret Bracelet. 

Ninite is a free tool that automatically downloads, installs, and updates various Windows programs for you, skipping past the evil toolbar offers. For Windows users, Ninite is arguably the only really safe place to get freeware.

This application is far more than a tool for tech support people to easily set up PCs. It’s a place you can get safe Windows freeware without trawling the usual download sites full of harmful garbage.

I format my computer about 4 times a year (each quarter it seems). After formatting and installing the operating system I download and install many different programs. Downloading the programs one by one on many different sites becomes very cumbersome, that is where the Ninite installer comes in handy. Ninite is a web based application that will install many different programs, all with a few clicks. Users are able to select their desired programs then install them using the Ninite installer, there is no spyware, no ads, just an easy applications that does wonders. After the users gets the installer, Ninite will automatically install all the selected programs, it’s really that easy and the best part is its absolutely free. So if you format as much as I do, your computer crashes, or you just need multiple programs installed without the hassle of installing them one by one I would recommend using Ninite!

If you would like to use Ninite you can visit them at ninite

OneDrive is free online storage that comes with your Microsoft account. It’s like an extra hard drive that’s available from any of the devices you use. You no longer need to email files to yourself or carry around (and possibly lose) a USB flash drive. Instead, whether you’re on your laptop and working on a presentation, viewing photos from your last family vacation on your new tablet, or on your phone reviewing your shopping list, you can get to your files in OneDrive.

Getting started with OneDrive is easy. You can add files already on your PC to OneDrive by either copying them over or moving them from your PC. When you save new files, you can choose to save them to OneDrive so you can get to them from any device and share them with other people. And, if your PC has a built-in camera, you can automatically save copies of the photos in your camera roll to OneDrive, so you'll always have a backup (Microsoft.com).

There are many online storage cloud, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. I think OneDrive is the best online storage option. The other options are good but OneDrive seems to be nearly perfect. OneDrive is available on PC, tablets, smart devices, Xbox One, and many other devices, having access to all you files on your devices comes in handy. Storing files on thumb drives in convenient but becomes a burden when trying to access the thumb drive when using a smart phone or most tablets, there are extra able that can convert to a USB but again that is just a burden. OneDrive makes it easy to save data and retrieve data, the feature I like most is when I am working with a Microsoft Word document, I am able to save the document right to OneDrive and continue my work one any other device that supports OneDrive. I would recommend OneDrive to anyone needing a on-line storage facility.

Check out OneDrive here OneDrive

JDownloader is a free, open-source download management tool with a huge community of developers that makes downloading as easy and fast as it should be. Users can start, stop or pause downloads, set bandwidth limitations, auto-extract archives and much more. It's an easy-to-extend framework that can save hours of your valuable time every day!

JDownloader is available on Windows operating system as well as Mac operating systems. It’s a very lightweight and effective tool. JDownloader is very easy to use and is very useful, users simply copy the URL of the item they want to download from the internet and JDownloader will add it to its “LinkGrabber”. The program checks to see if the links are “dead” then it allows the user to download their desired item. JDownloader is great in many different situations. An example of JDownloader usefulness happen to me, a few of my friends from undergrad went on a hiking trip, one of them wore a GoPro and recorded most of the hike in 1080P. Recording in 1080P for 10 hours a day for 3 days means the files are going to be massive, in this case the total trip was over 300 GB. We all live in different parts of the county and all wanted the videos, posting it all on YouTube wasn’t an option, so we came to the conclusion the best way to share the video would be to upload it to a cloud service. The file were broken down in 5.5 GB parts, there were a lot of files, most browser limits the amount of simultaneous downloads to 6-10 and it seemed the download would fail halfway through. That is where JDownloader comes in, with JDownloader we were able to add all of the files and download 20 simultaneously at a time, if the internet goes down or the connection is lost, JDownloader will just pause the download and start it back up when the connection or internet is available. I found JDownloader to be a great program with a solid build, it’s user friendly and overall a very effective way of downloading files from the internet.

If you would like to try JDownloader you can download it free at JDownloader