AppLab
Aki
HMP
Denniston
NZBirds
Assessi
5+YourWay
Air NZ tool
Explore AppLab's project work
AppLab designs and builds quality iOS (iPad, iPhone), desktop, and web apps.
AppLab uses design observation, ideation, and prototyping methods to quickly build quality products.
Aki - A Maori language vocabulary and phrase learning App. Paddle your waka and escape the taniwha by learning and identifying words and phrases. Finish one level with six dots, then start the next level with a whole new set of words.
Once you’ve completed all four levels, play them again and challenge yourself to complete the levels in the quickest time possible with the fewest mistakes. Challenge your friends and family to play and compare their progress and achievements through Game Center.
This app was developed in close collaboration with Te Tumu, the School of Maori, Pacific, and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago.
Avoid publication pitfalls and increase your readership. HelpMePublish is a new kind of tool designed to help researchers analyse, harness and contribute to the publication of research. The HMP app for mobile devices provides databases on 13 major subject areas containing information on more than 6000 reputable academic journals provided by journal editors, subject experts and academic users.
The Help Me Publish system consists of four components:
(1) A native iPhone application.
(2) A Web Service that delivers content to the app to handle registration, ratings management, and journal searches
(3) An interactive web application that allows HMP administrators to manage the data that is fed to the iPhone app.
(4) An interactive web application that allows journal editors to monitor and update information on the journals they are responsible for.
The Denniston iPhone application was developed in conjunction with the Department of Conservation’s Westport office.
AppLab worked closely with field centre staff, DOC archaeologists, and community
collection of media and interactive elements extend the physical signage. Recordings from Jenny Pattrick’s book The Denniston Rose are played at every stop.
The navigation in this app is aided by the construction and coordinate mapping of an
historians to produce an interactive tour companion to augment the visitor’s experience when visiting the Denniston plateau.
The application guides users around a 20 stop interpretive trail. At each point a
aerial photograph that needed to be tiled to create an accurate, high resolution map of the area. Location services were used to map user location with 10 metres.
Developed as part of a Master of Design thesis, the NZ Birds iPhone application allows users to view information on New Zealand’s native birds, play a bird identification game, record and share their own sightings, and view the combined/shared sightings of all application users.
The original insight that sparked this application’s development was that most New Zealanders never get to see or even hear a Kiwi in the wild. The solution may be to share the most likely places where one may encounter kiwi.
A three component system was prototyped to release quality:
(1) An iOS application that served as a reference for New Zealand birds (including bird calls).
(2) A cloud service that stores and distributes user reportings of New Zealand birds to/from the iOS app and web app.
(3) A web application that displays sightings of birds by area, time, and/or bird species.
Assessi is a sophisticated web-based assessment tool. The Assessi system has been designed to be used by all kinds of students, but is currently being used by all Design for Technology students at the University of Otago.
It offers a kitset, modular approach to assessment where assessment components can be shared between staff members, papers, courses, or departments.
Assessment elements are combined on marksheets and each marksheet can be used to assess one or more student submissions.
Visualisations are used throughout the system to represent student workload, marking position (relative position in class), mark distribution, and assessment usage.
The system has a strict security model that offers fine grained access control based on administrative role.
Advanced assessment options such as peer assessment, group work, terms requirements, automatic archival of “A” quality work, and plussage.
An accompanying Student website allows students to interact with assessment criteria before submitting their work.
This software is written in PHP/Javascript/HTML and utilises MySQL and PDFLib/ImageMagick to create a desktop application-like interface.
A complex and sophisticated web application to collect and analyse subject information on nutritional intake.
The server-side web application then creates dynamic, tailored resources (in the form of pdf files and image collections) and presents them to the users via an easy to use web interface.
Each and every page of the generated resources/booklets is a composite of up to 20 individually selected graphic and text messages.
These messages are selected and combined using sophisticated selection algorithms that examine the subject’s fruit and vegetable intakes, motivational state, and readiness to change.
Users log onto their own 5PlusYourWay portal to track progress, complete questionnaires, and view their individually generated resource “booklets”.
The 5PlusYourWay service is currently being trialed by a group of Otago medical practices who refer eligible patients.
In 2011 staff from the Department of Applied Sciences at the University of Otago conducted a waste audit for Air New Zealand.
An interactive web app was developed to communicate the measurements and observations made from this audit. The resulting JavaScript/HTML tool allows Air New Zealand management staff to run scenarios where items relating to food service are replaced or substituted for other items. users can in real time see the effect of these substitutions across the entire Air New Zealand long-haul fleet.
Basic parameters such as number of flights, cost of fuel and burn value can be manipulated across all scenarios.
Note: data shown here is fictional.
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