Usability Engineering

I'm in this class called Usability Engineering. It is a graduate course at DePaul. I may have mentioned it in prior blogs...but the main project in this class is to develop a mobile application. Which is very cool.

Our group came up with an idea with a mix of using the iPhone, GPS, and audio tours. The premise is simple. Who wants to go to the museum and use the clunky and unsanitary audio devices? There are other functional tid-bits, but I can't really give it all away, can I?

Anyway, Angelique, our team member with a penchant for graphic design, went to an Apple iPhone Developers Conference yesterday. I wish I could have gone....damn. Anyway, she ran our idea and some low-fidelity screenshots by one of the Apple guys. He seemed to love the concept....so there is an MIT $100k challenge that I may peek into....but I need a part-time or full-time MIT student on the team. Or, maybe just proposing the concept to a few museums. Luckily, Angelique works for the Adler Planetarium (made famous by John McCain and his projector comment).

Nevertheless, I was excited that the Apple Guys were interested....and we were at a stage where the low-fidelity prototype didn't really look like an Apple iPhone app. So, it was promising. Our team will be presenting to a few Motorola folks next week. I just wanted to blog about it....

I will try and get the screenshots available to the blog soon. Feedback will be welcome.