This week, our blog post will take you through what UX designer Hélène and Software Engineer Khalil have decided to do for the project’s app.
The app is an essential part of the project. Whereas the connected product that we are preparing is to be used by the person with ASD, the mobile app is the interface for the caretakers. Having discussed with parents before, we decided that there will be two types of accounts: a parent account with admin rights and a guest account. Some parents have said that they would like professional caretakers to participate in drafting their child’s schedule, with limited insight into what the parents plan, and no right to modify what the parents have set up, hence the guest account. Once their offspring are old enough, parents said that they can modify their own schedule with them using the parent account. The ultimate decision-making for the schedule remains at the hands of the parents.
This far, Hélène and Khalil agreed on a simple, easy-to-use interface that would show the user first their profile after signing in with their username and password. Then they are shown the days of the week and can chose which day of the week to modify the schedule for. For now, there will be a schedule for each day of the week. At a later stage, we may reconsider this scheduling scheme and make it more customisable. Each schedule element is shown with an image, a title, duration and starting time. The image is an icon that can be chosen among the user’s gallery or a predefined icon gallery. Challenges include how to organise and craft icons for our UX designer, and how our Software Engineer will build his first mobile app with a functioning database.
The app is to be connected with our product via Bluetooth. Khalil will have to coordinate with Electrical Engineer Lucie and Mechanical Engineer Anthony to go through the very first trials for communication between the app and the product. The schedule defined in the app must be transferred to the product to show it to the youngster with ASD. The communication protocol is something than none of our engineers have ever dealt with and it is another challenge that we aim to surpass.
As of now, we are at the early stages of the app and are trying to give it a database. We will keep you posted as we move forward!