UAA Self Guided PDA Tour

Edward Wickham CS470 Project Final Presentation

Spring 2004

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

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.)

Project EstimatesThe Project Uncertainty Principle

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.)

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

Site OrganizationMain

Locater

Where am I?

Chancellor’sWelcome

MapLevel 1

MapLevel 2

MapDetail

BuildingsLandmark

DepartmentSummary

Help

BuildingsLandmark

DepartmentDetail

Common Site Navigational Controls

AvantGo Review

Common Page ArchitectureApplication.cf

magHTTPheader.cfm

Men

u ba

r

Content

Data Extraction Layer

Uses Color Depth and Screen Resolution data in

HTTP Header to determine graphics directory

Uses URL variables todetermine data detail level

Uses data to dynamicallyconstruct content

as well as new URLs

Database Schema

Map Detail

Buildings -

Departments -

Services -

Points of Interest -

Information -

Zoom out -

Home -

Map to East

Map to North

Buildings, Departments, Services and Points of Interest LinksDisplay information specific to displayed map

Summary and Detail Pages

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

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