Hello all!

I’ve made it to spring break! It should be great to spend some time with my dad as we venture up to Madison together! The app is going quite well, and it now is just a matter of adding sufficient pictures and information to it. I was also accepted as a presenter at the Humanities Symposium for my work on the app, so that is exciting!

On the wellness side of things, I am working on designing the wellness app project and putting together orders for our Wellness Lounge. (More on that in a few weeks!) It’s so interesting to see all the various technologies dedicated to tracking fitness and wellness data. The New York Times had a great section on activity trackers and wellness technology this week. Check out these articles:

• http://nyti.ms/1fmVzn7
• http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/the-monitored-man/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=science&_r=0
• http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/collecting-data-on-a-good-nights-sleep/?ref=science
• http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/collecting-data-on-a-good-nights-sleep/?ref=science

I also got some great photos in the past few weeks of campus thawing and flooding. Enjoy below!

It’s a beautiful day here in Grinnell, Iowa. I’m continuing work on my programming project. My main problem that I’m trying to solve in how to place a clickable map inside the application. I’ve drawn up some plans for it and am trying to get the code to cooperate. Luckily, Google and other online resources are proving pretty useful for finding resources. It’s a matter of making all the bits of code work together. I like to think of it as working with a very complicated recipe. I know what ingredients I need, it’s just a matter of prepping them and cooking them into a delicious dish. There’s a lot of trial and error involved, but I’m feeling more and more empowered as I learn. That’s not to say that I feel like an expert, but its exciting that what used to be pure gibberish now makes at least some sense. I spent the whole weekend working on the code, and seem to be making progress. I’ve also been designing a series of posters for the wellness department and continued modifying app mockup drawings.

Today has been spent doing readings, planning, and organization… outside! It’s a balmy 58 degrees outside right now, so I’ve been taking advantage of it. I’ve been soaking up the sun (and vitamin D) by working outside in front of the JRC. It feels great to just be outside after a long and freezing winter. The snow is melting, turning parts of campus into lakes and rivers, which makes for some cool photographic opportunities.

http://instagram.com/p/lXnuerRPJP/

http://instagram.com/p/lXn83ExPJo/

 

 

Coincidence is a funny thing. 

I keep running into fantastic coincidences during my meetings and work that make everything work better. The latest:

1. When looking into programming a web application, I found a product by Intel (#GrinnellConnection) that completely reshaped my plan for programming my MAP app. 

2. My professor (Janet Davis) for my Value Sensitive Design class that I was meeting with to discuss some strategies for making my app better had just been using the ideal app I need for my Wellness Technology Internship progress. (More on that later!)

3. My meeting last week with Professor Purcell led to us looking at the app for HistoryPin, which is solving a great deal of my design issues for my app, as it also deals with historical memorabilia and mapping. 

 

In any case, here’s what is going on with my projects!

My MAP continues to chug along nicely and the prototype is working pretty ok so far. I’ll definitely be checking with my computer science-minded classmates to see if they have any suggestions or tricks to make it work better. My basic (so far!) programming skills seem to be working out well, though. It’s exciting to see what used to be indecipherable code take on meaning. I can see some patterns and understand a little better what is happening behind the scenes of my websites. The development software, the Intel XDK, is pretty incredible. It contains a coding suite, design software, testing, and software packaging for the major app stores. It also lets users code in HTML5 instead of other languages, which is great for a beginner like myself. Another awesome feature is the ability to stream the app directly to my phone for direct testing, which is super useful to make sure each new feature works. 

On the Wellness Tech front, I’m working on developing some public awareness posters based on survey data from the student athletes this fall. It’s an exciting project and I enjoy putting the data into a more visual form. Jen Jacobsen and I are also working on a pilot project to use smartphones as wellness-enhancing tools! I’ve been using myself as a guinea pig to test out various fitness tracking apps and wellness-oriented apps to see what may work for college students. My current favorite is “Balanced” which was recommended to me by Professor Davis. It focuses on reminding you to practice good regular habits with minimal reminders. I’m enjoying the fact that it hasn’t jumped on the social-for-social’s-sake train unlike many of the other apps I’ve been trying. It also is incredibly simple and customizable. I think it may be the app we’ll be using for our project, I just want to test it for a few more days. 

 

 

A few of screenshots from my app prototype so far