Opening Statement:
How can GhostRide encourage you to get more active?
Gantt Chart:
Essentially, the last couple of weeks have been spent on implementation research, look & feel, and preliminary design. According to the chart, I’m slightly ahead of where I wanted to be in terms of design and preliminary implementation research.
Look & Feel:
The main intent behind look and feel task was to develop a brand identity. I approached this by creating a logo and defining a color palette.
Preliminary Sketches & Brainstorming:
The whiteboard in my kitchen served a critical brainstorming tool.
Final Logo Design and Color Palette:
After defining the logo more completely in illustrator and coloring it, I looked for fonts that could be used with it in the app and on any promotional materials. The printed materials will use Elkwood and the application will use Vergur (both of which are 100% free for personal or commercial use.)
Ghost Race:
Here there are various possible layouts for the visual display during a GhostRace, its remains to be seen if this will be effective while riding, so there is some uncertainty about this particular design.
Cyclist Profile:
Rival Radar:
Flash Challenges:
Implementation Research:
I started researching in more detail mobile map API’s for GhostRide as obviously maps are really important to this project.
There were really 3 main competitors in this field that stood out as a possibility:
Pros: Robust, reliable. Run by google. Everyone is familiar with it. Street view capabilities.
Cons: Limited bandwidth and unique calls to parts of the map API. Customizing the maps themselves is somewhat difficult. Can get expensive if you make many calls for tiles.
Pros: Open source, customizable maps.
Cons: Confusing mobile API, limited free service because servers on run on donations.
Pros: Easily customizable, fully vectored map with MapBox Studio Program. Generous free number of unique calls per month before any cost is incurred (50,000). Can set up a map in iOS is only a few minutes. Simple API. Well documented. Open source.
At the moment, I think I’ve decided to move forward using MapBox because it has everything I need, and importantly customizable maps, which will help maintain the look and feel of the in app experience. Additionally, it has really generous free bandwidth/call limits.
Closing statement:
How can’t GhostRide help you to be more active?