Creative Development Lesson

Creative Development

This lessons focuses on the process to create a well-developed and tested program that includes the multiple stages of designing, coding, and testing. Collaboration, feedback, and iteration are key aspects of software development.

Creativity

A way to express your personal ideas, color combinations, fonts, wording, and images among countless other options. Design decisions are needed for an app to be easy to use and interesting to view. Creativity is important because it encourages users to spend their time & money to view or play apps. There are software tools to help refine a beginner app to becoming a professional one. These tools can also offer suggestions to improve the app before investing time and money into a specific program.

Computing Innovations

Example of computer artifacts: apps, games, images, videos, audio files, 3-D printed objects, and websites. Innovation can come from working with a software and the desire to improve it or it sparks creativity. Computing innovation has to include a computer program as part of its functionality. Example: a map is not a computing innovation, but Waze, Google Maps, & MapQuest are becuase they rely on computer coding to function. A computing innovation can also be a physical device such as a FitBit or can be virtual, such as a mobile banking app. A computing innovation can solve a problem, entertain, or educate others; it takes creativity and innovation to create and implement it to be successful.

Collaboration

Working together has many benefits: identifying the purpose of software, understanding the user for functionality, saves time, provides a better outcome due to different ideas and views, and the variety of team members will exclude bias in the software. Team members must all contribute, listen to others, negotiate and resolve issues, and work together with implementing ideas. Team members use their talents, knowledge, and experience to decide which task of creating the software is best. For example, one person may be best at typing code, another may be best at debugging, etc. Also, communication is key! Technology makes collaboration possible for those in different locations. Team members can use various platforms to meet virtually and online tools, such as shared documents, help with recording progress, problems, and solutions.

Developing a Program

• Iterative (continuous) process

• Step 1: Investigate a problem or fully understand the idea. Also, define what the program needs, interview users & understand their needs, use surveys to collect data, and ask a variety of users for different perpectives, backgrounds, and viewpoints. Lastly, identify program constraints.

Step 2: Design

• Brainstorming ideas

• Storyboarding: identifying layout, data, where it comes from, how it is processed, and where it goes next.

• Modules: grouping features of a program into modules or components. Example: resetting scores, clearing screen, moving players when game resets.

Step 2: Design (continued)

• User Interface: how and how fast someone can use a program, ease of use, visually appealing, and the overall user experience.

• Testing: testing each requirement (no coding at this point).

Developing a Program

• Step 3 Prototype: Can be a mock up of screens, can include small simulations of working code of how the process will work. Feedback is critical and prototypes are inexpensive ways to get feedback.

Developing a Program

• Step 4: Test: test the program, debug, use defined inputs (boundary values/minimum & maximum inputs) to ensure algorithm or program produces expected outcomes,

• Step 5: Reflection: Iterative process and incremental process used to reflect before moving on to development

Programming Basics

Lines of code make up a program. The code can run or execute specific instructions on a computer. Sections of code are called code segments. How a program behaves describes how it runs and how someone interacts with it. Program screens include messages displayed, buttons to press, menu options to select, and other features. Programs receive input (data provided to the program) by someone using it, sensor, file, microphone, image, or other method. Event-driven relies on an event such as finger swipe or tap, mouse click, timing, etc. Input is processed and provides output (text, sound, image, etc).

Debugging (finding & correcting errors)

• Use procedures (functions): easier to read & understand, provides shorter program, can be called as much as needed, updates can be done in one place.

• Use well-named variables & procedures: communicates what they do, easier to trace through program & understand what they do.

• Handtracing: line by line debugging tool, best way to find logic error.

• IDE's include visualizations: Integrated Development Environment - program used to code (Code.org, Scratch, Eclipse, etc.), shows code line by line to help track errors.

Debugging (continued)

• Debuggers: programs written to test & debug other programs

• Temporary print or display: Console log, print, or DISPLAY statements can be removed after the error is corrected.

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Types of Errors

• Syntax errors: punctuation, missing parentheses () and typos.

• Runtime errors: occur when program is running after it has compiled. Example: variable is equal to zero and program tries to divide by it.

• Logic errors: program runs but with unexpected results, hardest to identify, fault in the logic or structure of program.

• Overflow errors: when an integer is larger than the programming language can hold.

Documentation

A requirements document is needed in the Investigation phase. Programmers should add documentation to explain program features and how it should be used to meet the functionality of the program. This could also be a User Guide to train others. Provide additional documentation to well-named variables & procedures so other team members can pick up where you left off. Programmers should also use comments for each code segment to indicate its function and/or explain dificult or confusing blocks of code. Comments are ignored by the program when run. Not all IDE's allow comments, so documentation is important. Comments should also give credit of any source used for code, sound, images, or any other media.