So here is the program I am going to make, I decided to go with the name ‘Flow’ for this project I think its quite catchy and and gives the right impressions of my program and what it does.

‘Flow’ is a banking program which allows users to add their own bank accounts to the system and can review their outgoings and financial situations on the go, here are the benefits of the program.

• Accounts can be added regardless of what bank / building society it is part of.
• Viewing current funds without the need of a cash machine.
• Transfer money across accounts you are registered to instantly, in order to prevent fraud, money transfers to accounts in another name are held for a minimum of 24 hours with a maximum transfer limit of £300.
• Users can only register bank accounts in their name, this is also a feature which is implemented in an effort to combat fraud.
• ‘Financial Forescasts’ allow the user to programme in monthly direct debits, they may access a calender which shows when these direct debits go out or come in and show the amount of money they will have at that point based off their current bank balance.
• Eliminate the danger of being charged by your bank for overdrawing from your account - Users can set up a supplementary service which can transfer a preset amount of money to an account which drops below a preset margin.
• View bank statements that allow you to back further than your previous 5 actions, without the need to go to your local branch.
• Utilising the ‘Financial Forecast’ service the user can recieve warnings to their phone that their bank account does not have enough funds for an upcoming payment up to 72 hours in advance of the due payment.
• Budget schemes are also available for people who need to stick to a set amount of money. Simply enter the budget amount, time intervals and start date and ‘Flow’ will send a warning when you go over the set amount.

These are the main points that ‘Flow’ will have, obviously the user’s bank accounts will need to have some kind of online service, though this is commonplace nowadays. In order to come up with this idea i looked and 2 different examples of financial planning online: Barclays.mobi and Quicken I found these programs to be well thought out and functional pieces of technology but the main edge ‘Flow’ has over them is the ability to add all of a users accounts to one device rather than being restricted to barclays accounts only, or having to manually put in all of your expenditures. In essense I wanted to take the best parts of these programmes and marry them together, whilst trying to expand on their core design.

I tried to make ‘Flow’ as secure as possible without going overboard on security settings. so it will be safe and simple to use without the worry of security issues.

Now I can start work on my demo for ‘Flow’ which will be posted up here as soon as possible, I’m hoping to create both a funcioning prototype and a presentation but time constraints may force me to just make the presentation.

Coming Soon

Signing Off

Dave

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OK I’m rested and tanked up on tea, On my previous blog I posted all of my research, unfortunately with that gone now I can only try to remember my research in this brief summary as proof that I have been working on the assignment.

Initial Research

My initial research carried me to the library where I had a look at Convergence Design by Steve Curran, I found the book to be an interesting look into marrying existing technologies, though most of the convergence involved establishing communities through the web and television. This began started to make me think about creating a program which is just a marriage of multiple programs instead of attempting to create a new one which may be deemed unnecessary.

The other book, Designing for Small Screens By Carola Zwick and Burkhard Schmitz I found very helpful in terms of what designers need to think about when creating mobile devices and their applications. A term I was introduced to was one-handed interaction, using one hand to both hold and interact with the phone, there is obvious difficulty in this case due to the fingers being restricted only allowing the use of the thumb. If my application was to be usable if would need to have it’s interface simplified and compiled so that users can navigate easily.

Web 2.0

I attended a lecture by Richard Adams from Perfectly Normal Productions, where I was introduced to the concept of Web 2.0, which is the Internet evolving into a type of community, where all different aspects of life converge and mix together to create a network of people within a global community, something quite reminiscent of Mcluhan’s Global Village where society is so interconnected that national events become world knowledge. This easy access to information that the Internet now provides us with brings the world closer together but also creates ethical dilemma’s of what is considered ‘right’ in one country may be horrifying to another.

This coming together of people, this convergence of ideas and technologies got me really interested in creating something which could reflect this. Of course I’m not the only person to think this, by looking at mobile phone applications nowadays it’s easy to see that designers are beginning to converge various aspects of phones and other technologies in the name of innovation. I don’t think I would call this innovation, I would call this an inevitability. People today want their information quickly, as a species we have grown impatient when it comes to accessing information, this could be down to the technologies that provide us with such easily accessible information, technologies that my generation and future generations will grow up with. The application I plan to develop will support this idea of speedy informational access.

Looking at Mobile Devices

A good place to start looking at potential applications is to view existing ones, at one of our seminars with Chris we discussed existing applications,we looked at well known additions to phones such as camera’s, games, mp3’s, etc. what really interested me though was, even though these applications were popular, there was no real need for them.

My phone has millions of weird applications on it yet I had never even known they existed until the point I actively seeked them out. the only exception to this was my camera but seeing as my phone is a Cybershotâ„¢ it was pretty obvious it had that application. The more I thought about the more I realised that mobile phone applications merely serve as a status symbol amongst the majority of people, having a phone with a million applications makes you better than a phone that can call or text, despite the probability that both people use the exact same features.

With a lot of futile applications swirling around out there I found it encouraging to try and develop an application with a serious use that could somehow fit in with the whole concept of web 2.0.

Initial Ideas

My initial ideas mainly consisted of throwaway applications that had now real practical merit, I tried to think about what was important to people and how could this be represented in an application that utilises connectivity and existing technology. I looked at health and safety, child safety, travel, news. Many of the topics I looked into had possibilities but I wasn’t really getting the feeling that an application I developed for it for make any real impact on the topic. The first real breakthrough I had was an idea concerning digital reciepts here was the main idea behind it:

• If all shops stored customer reciepts digitally which the customer could access from home or on the phone this would eliminate the need for till rolls thus helping the environment due to the sheer amount of till rolls used each year by megastores.
• Customers would not lose their reciepts and proof of purchase would always be available
• This idea could be expanded upon providing the customer with mothly expenditures and stores could offer them deals based on their purchases, much like a loyalty card.

This was a very plausable idea that not so much utilised portable access, and as I thought about it more and discussed it more problems began to emerge, mainly practicality issues which conflicted with my idea to provide a simple application that coincides with the principles of convergence and web 2.0.

Evolving the Concept

During a mid project crit I put forward my initial and only idea expecting it to get shredded by all the problems that had emerged, instead I was urged to stick with the idea of financial management and expand upon my idea to incorporate bank accounts etc, this seemed to make a few heads nod in the room (since there was only about 5 people there that was a RESULT!).

What I had at this point was a desire to create an application, utilising existing technologies that people would actually want to use instead of having as a trophy app, I wanted to make an application based on the theme of financial management as I believe it to be of key importance today. Now all I had to do was make a useful application based on these ideas, using my core design beliefs of simplicity in design.

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So there we have it, a very brief summary of my research and how I moved from one thought to another I am happy to say I have settled on the idea for my application and plan to start making a demo early tomorrow, but before I make the demo I’ll post up my idea with comparisons to existing competetors, the pros the cons and the downright strange, it will all be here tomorrow. So for now I’ll say goodnight and grab another tea before sleep.

Signing off

Dave

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