Improving the User Experience

 


    This week we aimed to implement new features that would make navigating and using the functions of our app easier for our users. We removed the action bar from the top portion of our app and replaced it with the Android widget, toolbar. This gave us the opportunity to add a variety of buttons to the top banner of the app that will be accessible from any page or activity of Course Connection. We moved the sign out button from the main screen so we were able to save some screen space for other features in the future. After a bit of discussion we decided to leave this feature of the menu bar open ended. Currently it contains the sign out button and the "My Profile" button which will take you to a screen where you are able to view all of the ratings that you have left. In the future we may add more to this toolbar. The next pieces we added were a set of drop down menus so the user is able to sort reviews by their course code. This feature also assisted us in adding an autofill feature on the page where you leave a review. To assist the database management and not have to decipher the entries from the user, we have a preset list of all the course codes offered at Augustana and then all the user needs to enter manually is the course number. For example, you can type C into the course code box and CSC, CSD, COMM and others will show up. You can select CSC and then type in 490 for the senior inquiry course and continue with the rest of your review. Over the course of the next week we are aiming to implement the leaderboards feature. using a drop down menu of course codes, the user will be able to filter by course code and find the highest rated classes in each department. At the main screen it will show an overall leaderboard of the highest rated courses at Augustana. We are also currently looking into the best ways to store our data. We want to find a way which will be the most efficient when you need to extract it, and a way which will hold a large amount for the number of reviews the app will eventually have.






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