UAA Self Guided PDA Tour

1
UAA Self Guided PDA Tour

• Edward Wickham CS470 Project Final Presentation
• Spring 2004

2
Purpose

• Provide new students and parents with an
  alternative/supplement to Orientation tours
• Explore technologies for using a Personal Digital
  Assistant (PDA) in a Self Guided Tour

3
Requirements

• Begin and go anywhere (Active Tour)
• Use PDA Format Palm, Pocket PC
• Deliver to UAA-owned and personal PDAs
• Include Visual and Text Navigation
• Provide information
• Physical (Buildings, Landmarks, Services)
• Contextual (Departments, anecdotes, etc.)

4
Project EstimatesThe Project Uncertainty
Principle
5
Analysis Questions

• What is the nature of the data?
• Effectively static
• BUT!
• Presentation formats are dynamic (Screen size,
  color depth, etc.)
• Data categories are inter-related (Buildings,
  Departments, etc.)

6
Final, Flexible Solution

• AvantGo Channel and its PDA based web browser
  provides for a ready made presentation and
  delivery platform
• Database provides for easy content maintenance
• Coldfusion application provides for consistent
  page presentation and dynamic content generation.
• Support for new devices is achieved by adding
  additional graphics, changing one file
  (agHTTPheaders.cfm) to map the device to the
  graphics directory.
• Support for the ColdFusion application can be
  provided by UAA IT Department

7
Site Organization
Main
ChancellorsWelcome
Common Site Navigational Controls
Locater Where am I?
MapLevel 1
BuildingsLandmarkDepartmentSummary
Help
MapLevel 2
BuildingsLandmarkDepartmentDetail
MapDetail
8
AvantGo Review
9
Common Page Architecture
Uses Color Depth and Screen Resolution data in
HTTP Header to determine graphics directory
Uses URL variables to determine data detail level
Uses data to dynamically construct content as
well as new URLs
10
Database Schema
11
Map Detail
Buildings, Departments, Services and Points of
Interest Links Display information specific to
displayed map
12
Summary and Detail Pages
13
Lessons Learned

• Never oversimplify requirements.
• Even with relatively static information, dynamic
  presentation is always better when dealing with
  large amounts of similarly formatted information.
• Presentation on a PDA is more difficult than it
  looks

14
Conclusion

• Delivered prototype Campus Tour on PDA
• Used AvantGo Channel and PDA based browser
• Provided a database and a ColdFusion web-based
  application to drive a dynamically generated
  Campus Tour