Paperboy is a cross platform news application for isolated communities in Nigeria. The application supports broadcasting news in rural areas. Paperboy was a course assignment for User Interface Construction at Aalto University Espoo, Finland in 2014.
I was a UX designer & project leader in the project. The outcome of the project included an Android mobile and tablet application, a desktop application and the design of a command line UI.
The project took 1.5 month. The design team included 4 persons: Cristian Grama, Denis Laure, Judit Stiber and Magda Laszlo.
The project took 1.5 month. The design team included 4 persons: Cristian Grama, Denis Laure, Judit Stiber and Magda Laszlo.
Problem
People living in rural areas in developing countries, such as Nigeria, still rely on printed newspapers,but many people cannot afford them .This lack of information causes them being socially excluded.
Solution
Since, most of the people in developing countries own cellular mobile phones and those people who has access to information (journalists) own desktop computers or tablets, the news can be forwarded via cross platform Paperboy application.
The news can be created on desktop computers or on tablets. These news can be forwarded by a "paperboy on bicycle" with rolling around the villages and broadcasting the news to users via Bluetooth. The end users can access the news on their cellular mobile phones with a command line interface.
Design approach
CLI (command line interface)
We stared with creating the Use Case diagram, which describes the different users' actions.
The first platform we designed for was CLI (command line interface) for cellular mobile phones. The user can communicate with Paperboy using set of commands designed for a small screen.
The design included a sequence diagram describing the communication between the user and the system.
Desktop and smartphone application
We continued with the design and implementation of the desktop,smartphone and tablet user interfaces. The desktop application aims to produce news, while the smartphone application is designed for consume news.
The design included activity diagrams describing the workflow of the Paperboy application.
The next step included visual design for the smartphone UI.
The mobile application can run on smartphone or tablet. The demo shows the smartphone application.
The desktop application can run on Mac, Linux or Windows.
