Resources for Keeping up w Emerging Technologies

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WK11 Good & BAD UX

The Good - Spotify

I find Spotify a very reliable app for listening to music. It’s similar to apps like Pandora but I think this one beats it because I believe the way you create your own playset is a better used here. Not only that adding and liking songs it’s a lot more easy to do here and I just realized that it has a section where you can look up concerts near you for your favorite artist. Now that is a really cool feature and the option of different membership plans makes it affordable for anyone.

The Bad RoByte

The RoByte app is designed to be a remote control for your Roku. Unfortunately for me it didn’t want to work at all. Now matter how times I reinstalled it or any the help it recommended, it just didn’t want to work. It would have been a reliable app in controlling my TV just in case if I lose the remote or if I just want to control it from my phone. Apps like this I find it useful for anyone in a family but looks like it wasn’t meant to be.

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WK10 Good & Bad UX

The Good- Kaiser

This week since the flu season has been leaving it’s mark on my family members I decided to look into the Kaiser app to see how user friendly it is to it’s patients. I’m the type of person who forgets there passwords and logins in multiple websites, I found it every see to sign in on the Kaiser app and to my surprise it’s very easy to use and navigate. As you can see in the screenshots below, there’s a alert feature if someone needs to call 911 and to setup a appointment to see a doctor was fairly see to do. After filling out the section on why I need to go, it would ask me a facility and date I’m available. If there’s a available time, it will pop up and then I get to set my appointment. Messages covers my alerts such as appointments and medical tests. I really like using it, it beats the time waiting with no appointment and the time you can spend on a phone call making the appointment. The app is truly the easiest way and most convenient.

The Bad - Amazon Kindle

While Amazon is reliable on making purchases and getting the, shipped to you, Amazon Kindle is a app for digital books to store them and give access to it’s users to read them. You can still make purchases as well but overall the app is designed to read the books on it. It’s a good concept and it works but it has it’s downsides. I personally don’t like how the books don’t have actual pages but instead they have locations. It’s not as reliable as pages but if you have a homework assignment and you are trying to read a certain section of the book, then this app is not designed to help you in that. Sure it has a table of contents but it doesn’t explain which location is which page. Also, I noticed it doesn’t have a dark mode on the app which is very useful to prevent eye stains. The white light coming from the background can tire out the eyes and if it had dark mode, it will be easier to keep using it with less lighting involved.

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WK9 Good & Bad UX

The Good - Yelp

I always heard from friends that Yelp is a very useful app in finding out if a restaurant or any kind of business is good. I really like how to overall layout out of the app is designed with the general app navigation bar located in the bottom of the screen. I did a searched on a sushi place called Sur Sushi and Yelp came up with this information. It showed how far it is from my house, It presented me the number of stars it has which is how good the service was there for other users. It also provides some history on it and a section for comments. It will also provide images of the food items if anyone else has uploaded them. I found it very easy to use and it just made me more interested in searching up more places I could visit. 

The Bad - Draw Climber

I like the idea for this app but found it annoying in using the drawing feature. So the way it works, you draw the legs for the square box and you need to reach the end of the level. There’s no time limit and it only gets harder the more levels you get to. It’s very easy to play but I had issues with my touch screen in playing this. It was having a hard time catching my moment in drawing and if I would do it again it will stop the first drawing from happening. The movement and timing of drawing and the climber were not aligning so it only made it frustrating to play it. It really needs a update to make the game more accurate for it’s users.

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WK 8 GOOD & BAD UX

For this week the apps I came across with are Forge Ahead and Google Docs.

The Bad

Forge Ahead is very similar to the Blendy app I went over before. The only user functions is holding down and drag with your finger to forge a weapon. It’s very tedious and repetitive. The only good thing about this app is the process of forging weapons but for what though. It’s kind of cool but not worth having the space for the app in your phone or any device. 

The Good

Google Docs is a application yo have access to if you have a email with Google. Not only that I was able to use it through my phone and it functions similar to the version on a desktop. It lets you write down documents and you have access to templates for resumes or any file form you want. To me it’s extremely useful if I’m writing down notes or doing a homework assignment on the go. I just save it on the phone and when I get to my computer I pick up where I left off by opening the file through there. If you haven’t used this I really recommend it.

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WK 7 GOOD & Bad UX

For this week I came across these two apps. 

The Bad

Games like Blend! to me seem too boring for users to use. For this game the only functions you have is pouring and blending by touching and holding the screen. The app is not worth using or having a phone for so long. If the game allowed to choose the fruit or type of liquid to use for example milk or water, maybe could have potential to be entertaining for kids but the moment you open it it doesn’t give you a start button or anything, it just takes you straight into it.

The Good

Marvel Comics was a pp I used before. It has a lot of the marvel comics throughout the years and give the readers access to them through this app. For example, I could go to a comic book store and buy a comic and inside the comic, there’s a digital code for me to add my comic here so I ca read it anytime and anywhere without carrying the actual copy of comic book with me. Not only that you can also buy them through the app and saves all the books you owned. Sometimes it will allow you to get a sneak peek of the book by reading the first few pages. It’s pretty reliable to keep you collecting together and helps out if you forget which books you owned. 

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Wk6 Good and Bad UX

For this week I used the apps for the new Disney+ streaming service and the Mario Kart tour mobile game.

The GOOD

 I personally enjoyed using the Disney+ app for mobile devices. The reason for that is because the mobile app has a feature where you can download the movie or show so you can watch it offline like if you are traveling somewhere. To me that’s a great feature for a streaming service because let’s say you are going on a camping trip and on the way you put a movie for the kids to watch. Also another thing I liked about is the layout. Most streaming service have the similar look but I really like how it’s presented. The color schemes are similar to the other versions it has and the images are all clickable. Also having multiple accounts is cool so you can continue where you left off on a show and not get confuse with another family member.

The Bad

I had mix feelings about this game because to me Mario Kart is a game I grew up in my household but playing it on a mobile device is not the same. On the phone you don’t get to play no one else and the controls are the same as a Switch or any Nintendo systems. In the mobile version it’s all touch and there’s only so much you can do on it. The movements are left to right and up and down to throw items. Also if you slide your finger from left to right or vise versa you slide. To me it’s lame, they could have made the game flip side ways to give that feeling of driving and the thing that frustrated me the most in playing the game was that the app was having issue reading my Nintendo  account. I had to go reset the password a few times so I could link it with my device and yet i kept receiving errors. Signing into the Nintendo account was so tedious and this only bummed me out when I was playing it. Wish the control system was better and the login was more functional. The graphics are great but those features really made me dislike it.

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wk5 Good and bad UX

So app I recently used and found extremely useful is the target app. I’m a frequent shopper at target mostly because my girlfriend loves to go there but once we found out about the app we can’t stop using it. The reason is because it helps us locate certain items in different Targets. For example, my girlfriend can be looking for a beauty product and when we search for it we can locate it within the target stores near us. Not only that we can also use the scanning feature it has to figure out the prices for the products. I tested it out with a disinfecting wipes bottle and the price came out. Not only that they present discounts and sales through the app to persuade the shoppers to go and buy.

The other day I was looking through the playstore to find a game I could talk about and I went into the top charts section and I came across this game called Idle Makeover. It has about 2.9 stars on Playstore so I decided to try it out and I really didn’t enjoy it. Its game with a dumb concept to it in which you as the player just clears up the avatars’ faces. By tapping the sections like hair transplant and medicate face, the characters facial features start clearing up but you spend the hearts to do so. It’s one of those games where you must watch an ad to receive more of the in-game currency. Also the more viewers the character receives hearts you get and clicking on the speaker, you also get hearts. It’s a weird game to me and there’s no purpose of it unlike other games that have some sort of story to it or gameplay that is challenging. This on the other hand is a type of game that has no value in playing.

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Wk4 GOOD UX

Forgot to upload this the other day. I went to Waba Grill for the first time and honestly I enjoyed my experience there. It reminds me of Yoshinoya but they seem to be a lot healthier here. The brochure is designed well, they used the same font family through it expect the heading for Family Meals. They had the same color scheme throughout the restaurant so you don’t see anything that has a random color that stands out and the fact you can see the employees prepare the food is also another plus for me. The fact I was able to see them cook shows me that my food is being freshly made and also I get to see what they are using for each meal. I’m trying to extend my knowledge in cooking so little things like that help me. Overall, Waba Grill had great customer service and the food was delicious.  

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Wk4 Bad UX Experience

So I recently tested out the McDonald’s App to see how user friendly it is to it’s consumers and it was a mixed experience on doing so. It was see to navigate and order food on it and I loved the little animations it had as well but the App still has bugs to work it out. First the login attempts were a little buggy because it gives you the option to login through Facebook, Goggle Account or just create a username for the App. The issue I kept coming across was that it kept kicking me out so I had to resign a few times and another thing I did not like about it was that the location system was having a hard time reading my phone. When you are making an order it will give you a button to click when you have arrived at McDonald’s and for me it didn’t want to work. This feature seems safe for the customers on their orders but this only made my wait time last longer. Last time I checked the App has a 2.9 review and a lot of the comments were about the login problem I had. If McDonald’s manages to patch those issues I feel like the App would have the potential to be worth keeping on your phone.

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Wk3 Good& BAD UX

So a good UX I interact on a daily base would be my digital alarm clock. I really like my Capello alarm clock because it’s very easy to setup the time and alarms. Not only that, it has a radio feature that plays when your alarm goes off so that’s cool. My grandparents recently purchased a alarm clock and I fine there’s more complicated to setup the alarms because you have to press and hold a button and when I was doing it for them, the process felt so long compared to mines. With my clock, I just need to press and hold about two seconds and from there I can press again and then decide if I want to set my time or alarm. Also the volume for it is loud so that’s a plus for me.  

For my bad UX for the week, I felt like experimenting on a mobile game and I remember hearing about this Marvel game so I decided to go with. From my experience, I think this game is good for kids but it really slowed down my phone because it kept downloading some features while the app was open. The navigation menu is neat and but when i try to battle it was a little buggy and it had a delay on it. Maybe my phone is not strong enough for it so maybe that’s why I had these issues. Overall I would still recommend it to parents for their kids.

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Wk2 Bad UX

Hello class, question has anyone ever changed a tire? Ok, does anyone know what tools you need for it? Well let me share with you guys that this past Thursday I was in that situation and boy what a headache it costed me.That day I woke up feeling good, on time and when I was about to head out to pick up my girlfriend to take her to school I ended up noticing I had a flat tire on the passenger's side in the back. At first I was ok, need to bring out the tools and remove the tire and take it to get patched, no biggie. But as hard as I tried the tools just did not work. The screw for tires are different sizes and I couldn't fine the right one. Not only that, I couldn't find the tire wrench for it which is this X shape tool for the tires. After an hour of trying with the help from my grandfather, we just went to buy a tire wrench. When we buy it the cashier at the AutoZone recommended us to get the bigger one which was about $35 compared to the we were taking. We listened to his advice, got back home and none of the sizes fit. We went back exchanged the wrench for the one we wanted to get at first and still we struggled so hard. At the end we just decided to drive the car like to the mechanics near our house and just a block away, the tire got in bad shape. We made it but at what cost, we had to end up replacing the tire instead of patching it and filling it with air like we planned. The overall experience was frustrating. With the pressure of having to fix this and worrying about my girlfriend's classes because it's almost finals for her just made this experience more stressful compared to how I had it thought out. 

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Wk2 Good UX

Just the other day I went out to eat some Ramen and boy I was amazed on the restaurant I went to. It’s called Kai Ramen and it’s located on Ventura Blvd in the city of Sherman Oaks. It’s a tiny shop and the parking for the area is so insane they had a security guard directing traffic. Anyways, it’s small and maybe about 20 people can possibly fit in there and there’s about 4-5 small tables. As soon as you walk in, you are greeted and welcomed by the staff. The waitress comes over and take your order and throughout the experience they were always onto of it. Now I’m getting to the best part, the food. I’m no expert in Ramen but my girlfriend recommended I should get the Volcano Ramen and boy I did not regret it. Just writing this post is making me crave it again. The noodles and the spicy flavor it had made the Ramen so delicious. Oh did I mentioned it won first place on Eater Los Angeles for best Ramen. Hopefully next I go, I can try their signature Kai’s Red bowl filled with salt base, skinny noodle, pork belly, flavored egg, scallion, kikurage (stripped black mushroom), red onion, dry seaweed, flavored sprouts. If anyone is ever in town, I suggest looking for this place, it may be a pain just parking there but the food is worth it down to the very last noodle.

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After taking MDD 410, I’ve learned a lot about the emerging technologies and tools that I could use in my everyday life that can assist me in ways I never thought they would. Professor Singleton was great explaining us about topics we weren’t familiar with. She covered topics that help us understand the history of certain technologies like Motion Picture and the Internet. We also talked about the differences about AR and VR and how things like QR codes carry information that not everyone knows about.

When I first signed up for this course, I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest I just thought it would be another graphic design course that can help me out with my skills such as AfterEffects or Adobe Flash but really it was more a history lesson about the technology around us. It was good because it helped me cover parts that I really enjoyed talking about and also gave us a idea of how things will be in the future if certain devices stick around and evolve. It gave us a perspective of how other individuals view devices and made us be creative in a way that made us think more deeply like if we already are at a job. Also this course was a lot easier than I excepted, it indeed helped me review some topics I like and there was a lot of interesting topics covered through the discussions with everyone.

A few things I picked up from this course I enjoy making were the scancodes and the 3D models. Scancodes which are known as QR codes carry information about pretty much anything you want and place it within a scanable code. It’s designed to be quick response and with the proper app we can scan it and it will take us directly to our websites if want. It showed me the good and bad things about it but overall the experience was good. Another topic I enjoyed doing is the 3D model as you can see above. I didn’t know how simple it was to make one and if only I had a 3D printer, I would so create that Batman logo and hang it in my home. 3D models taught me there’s more than just Illustrating and Photoshop. Besides those, I also learn how to do a interactive online game which made me more curious about gaming and currently I’m working on a game through Unity.

Even though I learned new designing skills, the lectures about social media has impacted the world and how it can benefit someone if used correctly has showed me a more proper way to approach social media and advertising for later projects of mines. The whole AR and VR discussions really interesting me and I want to experience it already. I’ve seen the 360 videos on Youtube and they are pretty awesome. To know that is the next step to gaming is impressive and hopefully I can be part of that movement as I continue to learn about designing and coding.

I would say all the new design skills I’ve learned are what I will continue to take with me as I move forward into my career field. I already have ideas that I personally want to see and to know what the audiences want is a good thing. The future of technology will continue evolving, making more interesting products that everyone would want and to know I’m in a career field that can be part of that is amazing. I could possibly one day be working on a new mobile phone design or maybe a VR game if I’m lucky with the proper skills I’ve have. If not I could making a animated film for Disney or something if I network correctly and present designs that people like. Who knows where I’ll be in 5 or 10 years but I know because this course, I’ve learned cool techniques to get there and I’m glad I was part of this, thanks Professor!  

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Resources for keeping up w emerging technologies

In a world where technology is all around us now, knowing what’s to come will definitely help us adapt to a better life using technology.  Technology has made things simpler for us, by giving us devices the Fitbit watches, we can keep track of heart rate, our meals, exercises and the amount of sleep we get. Also mobile devices have gave us more access to the things around us and just by a push a button or voice command we can activate or deactivate certain things. With http://www.gizmag.com/, we can keep track on what’s new, here they provide reviews and cover devices we normally don’t hear on the news. Things like “Catching up with the Jetman” lets us know how certain technology is going and what the inventors are planning to do next with it.

Another site is http://bestofwhatsnew.popsci.com/ , here we can known what new technologies are coming this year and what certain companies are working on such as new mobile phones or how some gadgets can provide a better experience to the users when used with another such as the Adobe Ink & Slide.

http://mashable.com/ is the go-source for technology, digital culture and entertainment content. Here the latest news can be found about any of these categories, letting us know about information we are not aware of like the tattoo testing app that lets you see how a tattoo can look on you before getting one.

http://www.popsci.com/ is a popular science magazine that talks about all things technology and information. They dedicate on discussing what’s current right now and discuss about upcoming trends in tech that are soon available in the market.

http://arstechnica.com/ is another site providing the latest on news and tech gear. Are Technica was created to start a publication devoted to technology and later transition towards news reports, op-eds and later then launched a digital subscription service.

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Franky Zapata's awesome Flyboard Air redefines the concept of a hoverboard

This French inventor's new turbine-powered flying platform goes as high as 10,000 feet and flies for up to 10 minutes at a top speed around 150 km/h. Forget your electromagnetic rubbish, this is what we call a real hoverboard.

I came across this new concept of hoverboard that comes close to the expectations people have for such device. This french inventor Franky Zapata’s water-jet Flyboards are a popular vacation experience but he had a bigger idea on mind when working on them. This past weekend he released the first video that reveals his new technology that has him soaring about a maximum height of 10,000 feet for about 10 minutes while just standing on a pile of jet thrust. In 2011 he introduced his Flyboard, where a person can jet ski of water and perform tricks with a jet platform. Here on the other hand he replaces the water jets with one jet turbine engine and a backpack fuel tank to get him lifted off the ground. The Flyboard Air makes a impressive debut soaring Zapata over water but it does raise concerns if there’s engine failure and parachutes are not useful if below 100 feet. Maybe a inflatable suit can break someone’s fall if there’s any concerns? Nonetheless this guy is on the right track by coming up with cool ideas like this.

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Fad or Trend

Many people at times struggle at telling the difference between a fad and a trend when really it isn’t that tough. A fad is defined as a short term event, something that is “in” right now. A trend on the other hand has potential to become a long term thing. The difference is the duration of the two and for devices such as hoverboards & the Oculus Rift, they are more fads than trends. The reason behind this is because these topics have been around for years, probably since “Back to the Future” first mentioned them but the current versions we have right now are not the devices we will have later on in the future. The hoverboard literally is not how we pictured it like in the movies, we have a version that it still has wheels and we can operate it through a mobile app while the one Marty McFly used was like a skateboard with no wheels. The reason its a fad is because its first of its kind and a good amount of the population has one and that makes it very popular at this moment. The same goes for the Oculus Rift, it is one of the first Virtual Reality devices that is out there and after years of demos, a VR device has finally been made. The virtual device brings high-end often magical VR experiences, giving the users a experience of gaming like never before but it’s consider 2nd best while the HTC Vive out beats it. Since both VR devices are the first gen VR headsets, its pretty obvious one will be a fad while the other will be a trend.

http://www.gizmag.com/oculus-rift-review/42846/

Since I mentioned HTC Vive as the better VR headset, the device brings us the VR experience we always imagined. The HTC Vive is the only cureent VR headset with a system built around walking around a room, freely and safely. It’s 360 degree tracking with sub-millimeter accuracy can open the door to games where you are exploring as if you are really in a new world. The Vive has a feature called Chaperone system that practically notifies you when you are close to a wall by poping up holographic virtual walls letting you to back off. While later years and decades to come wil provide us a better experience, but as far as right now room scale VR is the leading edge and this can make the Vive a trend as it continues to evolve.

http://www.gizmag.com/htc-vive-review/42614/