Dude. Like I said. Your application is going to be successful. I am a little surprised you didn't get in to the top 50. I still think it will be on every Android phone owned by a golfer.
On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 5:56 PM, finnk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > First, man I hate the term post-mortem, especially after reading the > wiki http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/post_mortem definition: "Any > investigation after something considered unsuccessful, especially used > of meetings and bridge games." So since I am not ready to concede > defeat (for TeeDroid as a product, not ADC), I will think of this as a > post adc examination. > > So TeeDroid did not make the 50 round 1 finals. I was admittedly very > upset when I got the email from Google, I hate loosing as much as the > next person. However, I picked up the pieces and have moved past this > obstacle. Would I have loved to win, sure, does it mean defeat that I > did not, no! > > Writing golf software is something I have been doing off and on for > years as a hobby. There have been many incarnations and ideas, > countless re-writes, and until now no actual product at the end. > > The Android Developer Challenge gave me one very important thing, > outside motivating factor. Sure I realized it would be hard to win > from the outset, but the ease of development, relatively stable SDK, > decent documentation, good tools, and the community made it easy to > continue. For that I would like to thank all the people at Google, > anddev.org, and all who contributed by posting on the developers > board. > > So what now seems like countless months ago (in January) I downloaded > the SDK, played around with it for a couple of days, and realized that > it was well suited to making my idea come to fruition. At that point > I started brainstorming features and doing rough design. After a > couple of months of working evenings and weekends I had a working > product. I then decided to take the plunge and work on TeeDroid full > time. I left my day job, started my own company, and got to work. > Several things motivated me to do this, mostly it was "I needed to > work on the product full time to do it justice". I am happy the way > it turned out. > > TeeDroid has 3 components, mobile application, the webservice backend, > and the web site. The first two components were developed in step and > the web site was built after the April 14th deadline. > > I did quite a bit of planning during this process. Not just specific > to the software or design but what to do if the ADC does not turn out > the way I had hoped. Personally I think considering it ahead of time > made it easier to accept and move on. > > The goal was to be able to showcase an application that would be as > complete and useful to the the average golfer right now. Being a golf > application (and a golfer myself) it was easy to find people willing > to sign an NDA and give me feedback on the application. Based on this > input and the time available I prioritized the features. I got all > the must haves into the submission and even added a couple that were > in the "cool to have" category. > > I spent quite a bit of time on the documentation for the project. The > reason being that I showed the product to some non-golfer friends of > mine and got blank stares in response. The resulting document was a > 14 page pdf file (1.5 spacing and the in application menu icon > images). There was a brief overview section at the beginning, future > development, a quick start guide, and detailed description of each of > the features. I did make the misstake of not having the quick start > guide as the very first item, or perhaps after a very brief > description, most important information first. > > I also made the misstake of not letting the judge go directly to "play > a round of golf". If he/she was impressed at that point then perhap > they would have spent more time. I base this on the server logs (I am > only assuming here that I made it to phase 2 since I had a total of 12 > judges look at the application, 4 for phase 1, 8 for phase 2). In > phase 2, a couple of the judges spent a significant amount of time in > the application, playing with some of the extended features. Most > actually went so far as to tee up a golf ball and hit a stroke. One > judge quit after attempting to create a new account with the same > username that another judge had already registered, even though a > "username already registered was clearly displayed". Another > misstake, I should have completely bypassed registration and just > assigned a user account, really is the judge going to come back? Does > he/she need to know the username or password? > > I had lots of issues with the LBS system. Once you started a Mock LBS > provider (using kml) it would start traveling along the part, no > pausing, no control. Using the existing LBS system as a template I > wrote a completely new system that had the features I needed: pause/ > resume, segmented paths (1 per hole on golf course). Using google > earth I created a set of tracks for 5 golf courses, ran it through my > preprocessor which broke them down into per hole segments and loaded > them into the /res/xml directory. I wrote a threaded provider that > could be passed the course id and then play back corresponding tracks, > hooked it into the interface so that when the user switched to a hole, > the lbs provider would reset to the start. This made it very easy for > me to demo to people so even though it cost some time, it was useful. > However, as far as the competition goes, only 3 of 12 judges seem to > have gotten there. Perhaps time would have been better spent on > something else. > > Since I was already mucking around inside the LBS system I wrote a > quick pass through for bluetooth GPS. It was actually quite simple > (couple of hours, lots of resources online), and let me go out and > field test the application. It was very gratifying to actually use it > on the golf course, and gave me insight into several issues. The > interface has to be brutally simple for 3 reasons: > > 1) The rest of the group does not want you to slow them down entering > results. > > 2) The product cannot be a distraction from the actual purpose to play > golf. > > 3) The interface has to be high contrast or it is really hard to see > outdoors. Or you have to turn up the brightness so high that your > battery will DIE before a 4.5+ hour round of golf is over. > > This lead me to rewrite several sections, simplifying the interface. > Adding predictions to what the user would want to do and preselecting > that options but still letting the user make the decision. And moving > away from a graphically/color intensive interface. Not sure this was > the right decision for the competition but the feedback from golfer > was positive. Here I blame the judges for not considering how the > application would be used, no golfer is going to use a complicated > hard to see interface, that is why the road is littered with countless > failed application in the golf space. > > I wrote a complete system. Meaning the webservice is completely > functional. For the competition time might have been better spent > mocking it out as the judges would not have been able to tell the > difference. But for the future, I already have a functional server > backend that can be used for other platforms as well as Android. > > The UI framework was also complex to work with. At times clicking a > specific button would make a table layout completely break down, stop > spanning columns, or wrap oddly. A lot of activities had more than > just a few revisions in the layout xml. I completely agree with > Michael Johnston from DUO that visual UI tool would have been very > handy. Especially once I started down the road of supporting multiple > resolutions (before I found out that judges would be using the default > one), the managing of a large number of layout files became quite a > chore. I am sure they will add this in future versions of the SDK. > > All in all the experience was very good. Yes I did not win, but I > learned a lot of things. Both about myself and about Android. I will > absolutely support the Android platform once phones are out. It will > enable one of the more advanced incarnations of TeeDroid. > > Thank you, > > Finn > http://www.teedroid.com > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Challenge" group. 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