It is hard to believe such a good application failed... You are still the winner in my heart!
On 5月10日, 上午2时42分, Michael Johnston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Duo didn't make it into the top 100 (let alone the top 50), which has > been very hard for me (I hate losing!) but since people here expressed > a lot of enthusiam for our project, I thought you might enjoy reading > about its development in more detail. You can watch a short video of > Duo here if you haven't already:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwSBLdGCjnY > > Although we lost the contest, Duo is alive and kicking. For now we > are shifting our focus to other platforms (for practical reasons, not > out of spite). If anyone is interested in investing in Duo or > contributing to it, or if you know someone who might be, please > contact me here: > michael AT codality DOT com > > So this is the story of Duo and its development. If you're more > interested in technical details, you might want to skip to the next > post where I talk about "what went right" and "what went wrong". > > Awhile back I quit my job as a game developer to work on my own > project. I used my savings to support myself while I developed a new > game development tool. Over the course of several months I made good > progress. In November of 2007 I heard about Android and Google's > development competition. I thought: hey, here's a good short-term > opportunity. But my project at the time wasn't a good fit for Android > and I didn't have any good ideas for new mobile applications, so I > didn't look into Android any further. > > Then, one evening in late 2007, I had an enlightening conversation > with an industrial designer friend of mine. She had recently > interviewed for a position with Microsoft's mobile division and she > told me about their grueling interview process. They were hiring for > people to help develop innovative new mobile applications. She told > me that one of their interview exercises was to design a solution for > telling stories using your mobile phone. This was a deliberately open- > ended exercise. The solution could be anything you imagined. I love > exercises like this, so it planted a seed in my mind. > > That seed germinated in early January 2008. One night I thought to > myself: what would my solution to the storytelling exercise be? I > thought it would be cool to use your phone to record information as > you traveled around, and then to share that information with your > friends. This could include text, tags, photos, audio, video, and > ratings. I thought that if there was a way to combine all of these > forms of information using a cohesive and elegant interface, you'd > have a very powerful tool for recording and sharing a huge variety of > location-based information, including not just your personal stories, > but also things like restaurant ratings. I called these potential > blobs of information "footprints". The idea would be to create > software that lets you leave footprints in your wake for your friends > and perhaps the public to experience. > > In hindsight I realize that this wasn't a particularly innovative > idea, but at the time I was fairly naive about the state of mobile > application development, so it seemed new and exciting to me. I kept > thinking about it and, after sharing the idea with some trusted > friends, we started coming up with a bunch of other (fairly obvious) > ideas: automatic friend finding, connecting footprints together to > create paths for things like guided tours, creating "future > footprints" for coordinating events, various corresponding business > models, etc. > > In early January I decided to download Android and start tinkering to > see what we might be able to develop in the time remaining before the > contest deadline. The results were promising. I hadn't coded in Java > in years (my background is C/C++), but I was able to get up and > running with Android very quickly. I found the documentation to be > very good for an early release of a new SDK. Where documentation was > lacking, decompliation could be used to look under the hood, revealing > a solid design with code that was easy to follow (except the > obfuscated mapping classes...argh!) > > Satisfied with Android as a development platform, I knew I wouldn't be > able to do this alone, so the next task was to find a team. A very > good designer friend of mine was also excited by the idea and wanted > to contribute part-time. His involvement would prove invaluable, > particularly during the final stage of UI iteration. He also had a > good friend who was a server development wiz. We approached him with > our idea and he wanted to contribute part-time to develop all the > backend tech, which was great. > > Within a few days I developed a very simple prototype comprised of a > map and a list of fake footprints. Our server wiz created a simple > backend and we connected the two successfully. This was extremely > encouraging. So much progress in such a short time! > > The three of us were also actively posting new ideas in a private > forum. As a result of our early prototyping and brainstorming, I > experienced one of those "aha" moments where you end up pacing around > the room excitedly, thinking non-stop about all the implications of an > idea. The idea in question emerged in the following way. Our > prototype was built with GPS in mind. You'd create footprints at your > GPS location. This worked well for creating footprints, but what > about browsing them? What about finding footprints in places you > visited previously, or in places you hoped to visit in the future? > > What if we introduced a lightweight, game-like interface that allowed > you to easily travel "out-of-body" to explore your city and the entire > world? I wrote a lengthy post about this and the other guys were > excited by it too. They extended it with lots of ideas of their own. > We knew it would be challenging to combine a fun interface together > with locational information, but we felt we were onto something, and > there was huge potential. The business models with this approach > would be much more varied and potentially lucrative. Thus Duo was > born. Many more ideas kept flowing after that. > > Meanwhile, I had been in the process of applying for a government > grant for my game development tool. After a great deal of inner > turmoil, I decided to change this grant application to be for Duo > instead. While awaiting the outcome of the grant application, I > continued developing the client prototype, spending a lot of time > establishing a solid framework for networking and storage, and testing > different UI ideas. I also converted everything to the new SDK > release. > > At the end of February our grant application was successful, which > meant the government would cover half the cost of hiring two part-time > Canadian contractors to help us (I paid for the other half). A friend > of mine from university was interested in helping us with programming, > and I advertised for an artist to help us too. As of Feb 27th we > entered proper development based on a loose but ambitious schedule. > Our team was comprised of: > - Me, full-time client programmer > - Fred, part-time server programmer > - Eric C, part-time designer > - Eric T, part-time client programmer > - Jasper, artist > > Everything progressed very smoothly throughout March. The framework I > had built in the previous month allowed me to fairly quickly connect > to the backend as Fred found time in his busy schedule to implement > it. I developed the tech we'd need for an avatar and buildings while > Jasper worked with Eric C to start cranking out art. Eric T made > solid progress each week with the interior tile renderer. > > By April 1st, we had an app that could do all kinds of stuff, but the > interface was still very rough around the edges. Other major problems > included: you couldn't properly login yet, you couldn't delete what > you created, dynamic updates weren't really working so it was > impossible to see friends creating footprints, etc. The amount of > work we did in the final two weeks to bring it all together was > remarkable and I'm really proud of our team. > > We spent all our time developing, and barely any time on documentation > or "marketing" because we believed that this competition would be > about results. We thought the best way for judges to understand Duo > would be to try it, and we thought the judging process would involve > several people using it for at least several minutes each. > > Unfortunately, according to our logs, only a few judges tried Duo, and > their experiences were brief. Maybe the client crashed and they > couldn't be bothered to login again. Maybe they didn't know you can > leave your house and go outside. Maybe they thought the underlying > premise wasn't promising enough. Maybe they didn't read our > document. Maybe they did read our document but they didn't like it. > We'll probably never know, but in retrospect I wish I had spent time > creating a demonstration video to submit as part of our document > (rather than creating it after-the-fact). Perhaps that would've > helped us score better. > > That's the story of Duo in a nutshell. Next I'll go into more > technical details about what went right and what went wrong during > development. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Challenge" group. To post to this group, send email to android-challenge@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
