Weekly Reflection (3/16 - 3/20)

I learned an important lesson this week. Not all programs are created equal. My thought process had been that since I had developed Banana Boom, creating the Help Desk app could not possibly be that much harder. I was completely wrong. Not only is the Help Desk app a much bigger challenge than previously anticipated, but it is also a project for which I will need to learn new material. For Banana Boom, I had primarily created the user interface straight from the code. However, for the Help Desk app, I will need to visually create interfaces using Apple’s Interface Builder. Creating the interface will require the use of Collection and Table Views, which I have not become too familiar with yet. Additionally, after the visual aspects are set, they need to be connected to pieces of code, which was also not required in Banana Boom. Therefore, to develop Help Desk Mobile, I will have to stretch beyond my comfort zone. However, I believe that this will help stretch my horizons and mold me into a better programmer. This setback will most definitely affect our proposed deadline of April 1st and we hope that it can be extended to May 1st. By this time, I will have mastered my new skills and will be able to provide a better overall application.

Other than the app, I have also been solving technology problems in Help Desk. Last week, Mrs. Dacey came down and asked if we could help her make a slideshow in iPhoto. Creating the slideshow was surprisingly easy. All we had to do was select the photos we wanted and choose create slideshow. With the help of my fellow Genius, Mira, we were able to also add text and music to the slideshow. All in all, this week I learned a lot about iPhoto and was able to help someone as a I learned.

Weekly Reflection (3/2 - 3/6)

This has been an exciting week for me. On Wednesday, Banana Boom was approved and became available for download on the iOS App Store. Since then, in a period of only four days, the game has racked up over 150 downloads. Mrs. Scheffer also wrote a post about the app on the Burlington High School Help Desk Blog. Additionally, there were several tweets made by users about the game. Reviews on the app store were also positive, with an average rating of 5/5 stars. With all this positive response, Mike Seleman (my partner in crime) and I considered the release a success. During school, fellow students would mention to us that they enjoyed playing our game and would give us feedback.

However, the game was in no way perfect. We realized on the very first day that it had a fatal error. The game was only available on iOS 8.1! This meant that people who had not upgraded their devices could not play our game. We immediately began work on an update and were able to make the game iOS 7.0 and later compatible the very same day. The update is currently in review with Apple but is expected to become available sometime next week. Despite this issue, we were pleased with the game and hope that it reaches an even wider audience with the update.