App Design Proposal
Please use this template to help you plan for your app design.
It is recommended to think through your design and include as many details as possible. App Inventor Name: Brian Querry Submission Date: November 6, 2011
I. Planning Table (30 points)
The Name of Your App Details Notes for Yourself
Category of Your App
Learning / Education Why are you building this
app?
This school year, I returned to directing instrumental music for the first time in almost 10 years. One things that I’ve found with my students is there seems to be a general lacking of fundamental listening skills. Students seem to have difficulty self-tuning, adjusting for intervals, and recognizing appropriate accidentals. This app includes various listening and recognition activities to help students work on these skills.
User Group(s) Middle School (grades 6-8) – students with several years of playing an instrument or private musical study (the app will be customized for my students)
User Test Plan Who are the testers?
This app will be tested by three people - a middle school instrumental student (grades 6-8), a high school
instrumental student (grades 9-12), and a music teacher. The middle school student will be able to test the app in the age level it is designed. A high school student can review the app from the viewpoint of an experienced musician. A music teacher can review the app from the viewpoint of a teacher.
When do you plan to test your app?
The app will be tested after 2 weeks of development and within days of its completion, with a target date range of November 22-27.
How do you plan to test your app?
The app will be tested by posting the app and a QR code on a class web site, and providing a link to the
prospective students. I have already identified a colleague and high school student with Android devices who are willing to participate. I will need to identify a middle school students who has access to a device (with almost all of my students having phones already, it shouldn’t be hard).
How does this app work? The opening screen will allow the user to select one of three sets of activities: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Once they select a level, they will be taken to a series of exercises (number TBD) that test their ability to recognize, identify, and interpret various musical intervals, keys, modalities, and terminology. The users will select levels using a button on the main page. Then, based on selection of that button and a set list in the block designer, the user will be taken to the
corresponding list of questions. The questions will be a mix of visual (with corresponding pictures), aural (with corresponding audio clips) and text-based. The user will be provided a text box in which to put their answer. For some questions, users will be provided a list of multiple choice answers from which to respond. A tally of correct and incorrect answers will be taken, with the user being given a percentage score at the end. Users will have the option to send their finished score to my email address.
User test results As this app is still in the design stages, no formal user test has taken place yet. However, I will have a formalized sheet with questions and rankings that I will ask the user to complete during and completion of use of the app.
Dissemination Plan This app would be promoted to all middle school and high school instrumental students, with the primary focus being middle school. Since all users may not have an Android device and I do not have enough for them to use, I at first could not require students to complete the activities. However, I could provide the option of students completing the activities in the app in lieu of some of the assessments in their instrumental lessons. Future development plan
for this App
This app could be enhanced in the future in many ways. First, rather than forcing results to my email, it could be customized to allow the user to enter the recipient email, thus making it marketable. Second, it could be changed each year with the exercises customized to match the music being played/studied in the band setting. Third, to assist special education students, an option can be added at the beginning to limit the number of questions. While these are all things I think are very achievable to add, I don’t plan to include them in the app design at this time.
II. Instruction for App Component Map and App Behavior Flowchart
Please use concept map tools (e.g., Gliffy, Google Drawing, or Bubbl.us etc.) of your choice to create the following to explain your proposed apps 1. App Component Map (i.e., explain what you plan to have on the Component Designer)
a. What are some visible components you plan to have on the user interface? (e.g., buttons, labels, images, animations, textbox for input etc.) b. What are some Non-visible components you plan to have on the component designer? (e.g., sound, location sensor, TinyDB etc.)
c. Why do you need those components mentioned above (aesthetic, relevance function etc.)?
2. App Behavior Flowchart (i.e., plan and present the behavior logic/flow you would like to have on the Block Editor)
a. What would your apps do behind the scenes? (i.e., How does this app work? What kind of behaviors do you plan to build in the Block Editor?) i. For example, if you are building a Virtual Tour app, you might want to have the app “present a list of sites for users to view after they
click on a button.”
ii. Present those planned behaviors in a flowchart.
