PsySlug
Engineering
CMPS 115 Software Methodology
In fall quarter 2011, our group took the Computer Science 115: Software
Methodology course. In this class, teams of students were expected to independently
complete a software project using the software project management and development
methods learned. For our project, Professor Margarita Azmitia of the Psychology
department approached us with a research problem that she hoped we could help solve.
She and her graduate student, Gina Thomas, were interested in conducting an
experiment on how adolescents develop their identity. Their research methods required
that participants in this study would fill out a survey of questions concerning their mood
5 to 6 times per day at random times throughout the day. This process would continue
for approximately two weeks. After this period, the data could then be analyzed to see
how the participant's responses changed throughout the day, based on their
environment and the people they were interacting with.
Professor Azmitia and Gina Thomas thought that a mobile application would be
an effective way of administering this survey, but they did not have the technical
knowledge required to develop one to meet their needs. After discussing the project with
them, our group designed and developed a solution that we thought would be both easy
to administer for the researchers, as well as intuitive for the participants in the study.
This plan consisted of two major components.
The first component was a basic PC application that the researchers could use to
create and edit the contents of their surveys, as well as view the responses collected from
all of the participants. The second component was a mobile application to run on the
Android platform that would distribute this survey at the required random times
throughout the day, and then collect each participant's responses into an easy to read
spreadsheet (using Microsoft Excel) which the researchers could access later for
analysis.
After completing the course, we are happy to announce that we have developed a
successful solution for Professor Margarita and Gina Thomas’ that is specific to the
needs of their research project. They plan on utilizing our application to perform their
research starting at the end of spring quarter 2012. Additionally, due to our generalized
approach to the design of our application, it can be easily adapted to other research
projects. Due to this generality, many other research groups at UC Santa Cruz have
expressed interest in utilizing our application and we hope to accommodating them.
