Cosmosic| Create a Mascot
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Cosmosic
Summary
Cosmosic App is designed for the newbies of the science world to have a better understanding of how NASA works, in an interactive and entertaining way. Many features, which can provide some basic knowledge about Science and Geography, are added to the App. Some of them include Earth Observation Data and Fire Maps. These 2 features provide real-time data in sync and can be used to monitor fires, i.e. predict them and know how to avoid them. 3 more features include Mars, Satellite, and Missions which provide their information straight from NASA itself. Combining all the features would also sum up the message that is needed to be sent, which is “Save the Earth”.
How We Addressed This Challenge
In the beginning, we got so many resources from NASA & its sister concerns, that literally made us confused to think about which one is to be chosen and which one is not. We first tried to find out our target audience/users. Here we focused on the beginners, who have little to almost no knowledge about NASA’s works.
For this reason, we tried to find out some of the common problems for beginners who want/wanted to be interested in learning about Space works and stay up to date with the latest Infos. We asked our friends and colleagues about that and received a good response from them. After investigating these issues, we were able to find out some of the main issues/ problems where the beginners would face trouble. Few of them are:
- The information is not centralized (in a categorical way) making it quite difficult to find out.
- There are so many huge data seats available on NASA’s website, but beginners can hardly access them and understand what is happening.
- Hard to find out the necessary guidelines.
- Sometimes the interfaces aren’t mobile-friendly.
That’s why we tried to build an app that will give all the required info and combined options with proper guidelines/ instructions to help the beginners to understand and learn better. Our project named Cosmosic will help the users with everything with a fingertip. The articles will give them the latest summarized Info. The Fire Map will aid them to view how our planet is burning and might make it easier for them to understand what steps are needed to save the planet. The Earth Observation data will give them the current pollution levels and other things. The Home and City option will show them and make them understand how simple things can become the inspirations to achieve awesome innovations. Finally, By creating awareness, we hope it will help a large number of people/activists to raise their hands and join together to work for our beautiful planet and also for better innovations.
How We Developed This Project
We discovered that many people, especially young students are quite interested in space, how things are happening around us and how to tackle everyday problems with innovative solutions. But the information they need to research this is not easily available and most of the time they need to jump abound from one place to another to find the information they need. Another big problem is the accuracy of the information. As we know the internet is full of miss information and many people choose the internet for their source of information. So they ended up into a trap of misleading information which does not bring them any progress in this work/ projects. People are in great need of correct information to purify their research and works. And NASA is one of the biggest hubs of accurate information and many of its information is open for anyone to be benefited. So why not make this information easily available to everyone so that by using NASA data they can create a positive impact on saving this planet. This motivation inspires our team to design Cosmosic apps in a way to help all including newbies or new learners.
To make this app we first listed which NASA elements (in this case NASA API, maps, HD image and videos and more). Then make a prototype using Adobe XD to test out the user experience. Our goal is to make it as simple as possible so that anyone can use it without having any trouble. After finalizing our design we started to make our app on Android studio. In future we will also make an IOS version too. We have used Java, Html, CSS to build and design different elements for different features. We have used different NASA API and other NASA data sources to provide the data a user needs. At this moment we have 6 features which are Earth Observation Data, Mars, Space Craft, Home & City, Fire Map and Mission. Each features Provide relevant and correct Data directly sourced from NASA.
It was not an easy journey for our team to design an app like this. We had to face thousands of problems and introduce yourself with new challenges. First one was to design the app in such a way so that anyone can use it. We have tried several combinations of design to find the best fit. Then came the next big challenge which was to make them according to the prototype design. Here one by one problems came. As we were working as a team we divided our tuks this gave us the advantage of coming with the solutions fast. In some points we had to come up with our own DIY solutions. Making this app was quite interesting as we learn many things along the journey.
Software used:
- Android Studio
Coding languages:
- Java
Challenges while coding:
- Many challenge is make a complete app within short time
- Compiling everyone’s task
Achievements:
- Together we made this app
- Learning many things that we didn’t know before
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We use NASA data for implementing our app. Our App has 6 features. In Earth Observation (Feature 1), it provides some basic info and parameter knowledge about the observation to make the user familiar with the features. In this feature we use everything from NASA NEO (NASA EARTH OBSERVATIONS). Home and City (Feature 2) provides information and shows how NASA developed its advanced technologies by being inspired from basic materials that are often available to us in our homes and cities. For implementing this feature, we use data from NASA HOME & CITY. In our third feature which is MARS, we will show pictures of MARS. We collect images from NASA Science-MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM’S IMAGE. In feature 4 our app has a live fire map. Here we use NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Research Management System). In our fifth feature, we will show icons of spacecraft. We collect images from NASA SCIENCE’s Spacecraft ICONS. In our last feature which is Mission. Here users get details about NASA’s mission. For this feature we collect data from NASA MISSIONS. We totally use NASA’s data for our app.