The Introduction
Google is releasing one very interesting product for trial soon. The new product which is called App Inventor allows the development of Android applications using a simple drag and drop interface and requires very little coding. This will allow people with little or no previous programming experience to develop simple apps. At least that's the idea, but will it really allow somebody with no previous programming or development experience to create a polished well designed application?
The Experiment
There is only one real way to answer the above question and that is to test it in an experiment. The experiment will be an application development task which will be performed by somebody who has no previous programming or development experience. Their technical experience will be of an average level. While the task is being undertaken the participant will only have access to Google's App Inventor and any documentation that is provided with it, no other help will be available.
The Candidate
After much consideration I have found the perfect participant. Maria from The Gourmet Challenge fits the criteria perfectly. She has no previous coding experience and average technical skills which allow her to use a computer but sadly only allow her to complain when things don't work. As an added benefit she is very creative which should help with the initial application design. Apart from all that she still owes me one due to an interesting post she wrote about me a little while ago. I believe the words she used in that post were "sad tragic tech gadget geek".
In the next post I will outline the specifics of the application criteria.
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