Last semester, my work was geared towards doing bibliographical research and participating in the development of a mobile application called “Go Green”. This Android application was developed by students from Pace University, the University of Delhi and two universities in Senegal (University of St Louis and EPITECH). “GoGreen” is an application that focuses on educating users about the physical consequences of non-renewable energy sources and the opportunities for clean energy alternatives. Users are presented with multiple-choice questions
to test their knowledge and they can then generate their own questions. This application was heavily relying on content. I was in charge of supporting the team in producing content suitable and effective for the application. What was interesting about this job was being able to collaborate with Computer Science students. Here, everybody could discover that developing mobile application is an inter-disciplinary endeavor. As a psychology major and someone who is
excited about smart phones, I participated in the development of an application– from idea generation to the release of the application. Based on these research results, Dr. Scharff and I decided to submit to the PIERS student conference on “Encountering Nature through University Culture” that will take place at the end of March at Pace University. This conference aims at demonstrating how nature and our environment are perceived in various fields of study ranging from social sciences, to natural sciences, to medicine, and to engineering. The poster I
will present focuses on how mobile technology can play a crucial role in education about environment. Mobile solutions can be of different forms: mobile applications (iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Java ME), mobile web sites, SMS and voice solutions. Mobile phones are at an arm distance of users. This proximity and ubiquity of mobile technology can be powerful. In addition, they have the potential to reach masses of people globally and thus, make a difference.
This semester, my research will be aimed at unraveling how developers and companies
are targeting environmental issues in mobile applications by using a qualitative approach. We will determine what types of applications targeting environmental issues currently exist in the different application marketplaces, including Android Market, Blackberry World App, App store and Nokia Store. We will study the trend and change in the applications submitted. It will be important to determine who is behind the creation of these applications and who the targeted audiences are. Each store has different categories including education, fun, games, travel, and books/references (etc.). A lot of time will be dedicated to filtering and further categorizing the collected applications. Based on the descriptions of the mobile applications, I will use “word clouds” to determine the topics that are most addressed through the different app stores.
I look forward to another semester of research to learn more about the environment and mobile
technology!
