PROJECT PROPOSAL

Project Title: An android application that promotes a healthy life style Supervisor: Miss Marie Devlin Introduction While the number of obese people is constantly increasing, with the records of approximately 26% of the adult population in England, several studies and techniques are continuously been developed in order to reduce the problem(Center, 2013). Mobile phones play an extensive role in mitigating this problem since they have become a part of our lives (Venta et al., 2008), and along with their enormous capabilities, are proficient with providing help, encouragement and motivation to those who seek a healthier life style. Therefore mobile phones can be used to make the workout experience much more appealing while offering valuable information to the user. The Android market, which has reached almost a significant number of 850,000 applications in the beginning of the year 2013, has at least 1000 fitness applications that promote wellbeing (Wikipedia, 2013). User interfaces are without doubt, a vital part for a mobile application (Adipat and Zhang, 2005), therefore it is of high importance to take into consideration user interface principles when producing applications. People who use mobile applications are often frustrated with bad designs, and as a consequence, usability issues arise (Adipat and Zhang, 2005). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate similar systems, indicate poor designs that must be avoided, and finally develop a highly usable fitness mobile application based on UI principles and on peoples preferences. Project aim: This project includes the development of a fitness mobile application. The application will provide a usable, clear, and efficient user interface which will promote a healthy life style, available for all ages. This android app will accurately track time, distance, and pace during a running session and will be able to log all of the information within its internal files. Project objectives The objectives of the project: Collect information from other similar systems Acquire information about what users need and what functionality is going to be useful via a questionnaire/interviews Evaluate the various user interfaces from other systems based on user interface principles Build a usable and accessible android application

Personal objectives:

Gain valuable knowledge in terms of project management Gain experience in technologies for mobile phones Address to the project by applying existing and new knowledge and techniques

Work plan In terms of the software development process the project follows the Waterfall method. The key points of the development process are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Preliminary research Proposal Questionnaire Additional research Evaluation System and Software design Implementation Testing
10/06/13 Preliminary research Proposal Questionnaire Additional research Evaluation System and software design Implementation Testing 9 32 15 15 11 7 6 15 Start Date Duration 25/06/13 10/07/13 25/07/13 09/08/13 24/08/13 08/09/13

Initial areas of research Conduct a research and an evaluation of similar systems Retrieve users preferences in order to determine the actual functionality of the android application Acquire all the software and hardware systems that need to be used for the development of the android application

References
ADIPAT, B. & ZHANG, D. Interface Design for Mobile Applications. Proceedings of the Eleventh Americas Conference on Information Systems, Omaha, NE, USA August 11th-14th, 2005. 1-11. CENTER, H. A. S. C. I. 2013. Statisticis on obesity, Physical Activity and Diet: England. VENTA, L., ISOMURSU, M., AHTINEN, A. & RAMIAH, S. My Phone is a Part of My Soul. How People Bond with Their Mobile Phones. Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies, 2008. UBICOMM '08. The Second International Conference on, Sept. 29 2008-Oct. 4 2008 2008. 311317. WIKIPEDIA. C. 2013. Google Play [Online]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google_Play&oldid=560860382 [Accessed 22/06/2013.