CS184 Individual Project Option

Dates:

• Posted: TBA
• Due: Thursday, June 9th, 2022, 23:59:59

Changelog:

A Map-based Social App with Geo-tagged Photo Taking, Lists of Photo/Caption Posts and Upvoting

Objectives: Practice Firebase programming, including sign-in UI authorization, working with the Google Maps API, Photo taking and file handling, custom fragments, and possibly the use of RESTful APIs.

Instructions: Program a "<FirstInitialLastname>GeoPics" app that shows a Google Map view of the UCSB campus area, and depicts geotagged photos on it, either originated from the app itself, or coming from an online database or web service.

Since this is a project, not a a fifth homework, you have quite a bit more flexibility in what and how exactly you implement things, but in order for us to be able to grade your efforts, you should implement the following functionality in some way or another:

• Use Firebase and its user sign-in UI to establish a user's identity, allowing you to log their individual "posts" to the database
  
  
• Log such "social media posts", which should at a minimum be geo-tagged photographs with simple captions (geo-tagged meaning an associated Lon/Lat value of where the photo was taken or where it was "placed" on a map by the user.)
  
  
• Photo taking and file handling should be part of your project, but you need not store the photos themselves in Firebase (in fact, that would likely not be a good idea, unless you store a a very small thumbprint). Instead, save these photos in a folder on your device, and maybe store a unique ID for them in Firebase. That means that if your project supports coordination among different devices / users, such photos taken with your device will not be shared. It is definitely a plus if you implement a solution where that's the case, but it is not required. Maybe only photos coming in from web services (such as Lorem Picsum or Google Places) will be truly shared...

• An alternative to viewing the social media posts as markers on the map should be a list view (recycler view) of the posts, where you should at a minimum sort them by distance to your current location. If you have a tablet, the list view and the map view could be visible at the same time. With a smaller device there will have to be some UI to switch between them.
  
  
• There should be functionality to "like" (up-vote) any post, and to display the number of garnered likes.

When the app starts, the app should first ask for all "dangerous permissions" that you will need for this assignment (such as in the following):

Optional ideas:

• You could represent (simulated or real) moving users as trails on your map:

Getting Started

Use the Android StudioNew Project “Google Maps Activity” app template to create your application. The google_maps_api.xml should be shown and prompt you to create an API key in an easy way. You can also follow the steps to create and add an API key as described in the slides on maps.

Hints

• Use the “Google Maps Activity” app template to start your application. Create an API key and add it to your google_maps_api.xml

• It makes sense to use your Firebase as the main agent of change, i.e. when you tap on the map, simply add new information to the Firebase. Adding the marker to the map (which draws it on the screen, etc.) could then happen through your properly registered Firebase callbacks.
  
  
• The lat/lon location of UCSB is: 34.412936, -119.847863. You may need these coordinates to initialize your map view. Set your map view to an appropriate zooming level so the campus more or less fits the screen.
  

Hand in:

• Thursday, June 9th, 11:59:59pm: Submit final project materials and documentation:
  • Complete code for your project. You can use any publicly available libraries / code / artwork / materials as long as you correctly acknowledge all sources.
    
    
  • Manual for your product. Document that describes how the product is to be used. Please make use of screen shots here to document all functionality.
    
    
  • Documentation of your programming effort and your design process. This should be a separate document, giving an overview of the different steps you went through and presenting all documentation materials you produced on the way. This may include:

• All external resources you used / consulted for your project.
• Documentation of the different stages of your design (see above, with additional material, e.g. sketches, mockups, questionnaires, etc.)
• (Not required, but seen as a plus:) Evaluation/Testing results (qualitative, quantitative). There could be a description on when and how testing took place, and a presentation of the results. 
• A summary of your design decisions and what they were based on.
• Any implementation difficulties you encountered and how you addressed them.

 

Please use Gauchospace to submit.