Monday, August 24, 2009

Developmental & User Experience Overview from SecretLab Inc.

Red Centre Guide 
Hi everyone! My nameʼs Jon Manning, and Iʼm a developer on the Red Center Way Memestreme  application for the iPhone. Weʼve been working on the application for several months now, and things are just now coming together to form this exciting and useful application!
The Red Centre Guide is an iPhone application designed for people visiting the Red Centre Way of Australia, and beyond ultimately.  The idea behind it is that travellers, equipped with an iPhone, will be able to travel to various points of interest in the desert and receive information on the places theyʼre visiting: text, photos, diagrams, videos, and audio. This is made possible by the GPS built into recent iPhones - the phone knows where you are, and how far away interesting places are. The advanced media abilities of the iPhone make it a perfect device for showing location-based media.
The goals of this application are to create an enriching experience for people travelling in the Red Centre, and to push the limits of whatʼs possible with providing geographically relevant data to users. Weʼre particularly interested in seeing whatʼs possible if we also focus on scientists and other occupations working in the field, collecting useful information on their iPhones and expanding the content available in the Guide. 
When designing this application, weʼve been careful to take into account several factors important to a driver in the desert. The application is designed to require the least amount  of attention from the user while driving, and to deliver the majority of its information without  any interaction.
We are grateful to the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, and especially our contact  Fred Richardson, for giving us the opportunity to work on this exciting project. Weʼre  expecting the application to be ready for field testing soon, and weʼre looking forward to showing the world! In the meantime, here are some preliminary screenshots! Secret Lab is a software development company based in Hobart, Tasmania. We began as a collection of students at the University of Tasmania, and have grown to be one of the most recognised iPhone developers in Australia. The three main developers in Secret Lab 
have all received accolades from the ,Apple University Consortium Appleʼs academic representative organisation in Australia. You can find out more information about us at