Literature Review
Introduction
We have reviewed current software products that offer similar
services to the ones the “VeloCity” project aims to deliver. There
are many fitness tracking apps on the market, but they do not seem
to fit the needs of people with disabilities. They tend to be very
visual, which is not suited for blind and visually impaired.
Furthermore, health tracking in these apps is created around an
average person, putting everyone else out of the equation. We are
here to change that for the better, focusing on specific needs of
everyone. Cherishing their abilities, but being aware of their
disabilities, and creating the app surround them and not a
fictional person. However, some companies are trying to change
that with more or less success. Our goal is to gather insights
from existing apps, both pros and cons. Finally, getting the right
view of what has been done, what must be fixed, as well as what
innovation we have to add, to make people’s dreams a reality.
Making everyone feel included and important both as individuals,
and as a collective as well.
Zwift
Although Zwift does not offer full range of fitness tracking
services, it is the closest thing to what our goal would be. Giving
seamless sports experience with big accent on its social aspects.
Zwift is bringing people together and making them lead healthier
lifestyles through cycling, which is amazing. The app has, many
pros, but also some important cons, which need to be addressed and
used in our use case:
Pros
-
It provides an interactive way for users to track their
progress.
-
It makes use of its hardware to obtain data such as gradient,
cadence, speed, etc.
-
Online, immersive and social experience for cyclists.
Cons
Evolve 21
The app provides a wellness program in three different areas:
cardio, yoga, and meditation. It is an app that has been designed by
the Cerebral Palsy Foundation so it is specifically made for people
with disabilities. It only covers a small scope of sports
activities, which is not suited for our use case, since we want to
implement capability to track and follow person’s progress, for the
full set of sports activities. Moreover, the non existence of
personal coach makes it very general and not individually tailored,
which makes all the differences. Some of the pros and cons of the
app are the following:
Pros
-
It specifically takes into account the needs of
mobility-impaired people.
-
It does not require any additional hardware or software apart
from the app.
-
It teaches users a wellness program that can be completed in 21
days.
Cons
-
It does not allow for voice control. (repeating pattern in
fitness apps)
-
It does not make use of any sensors, so it provides no insight
on the users’ physical performance.
-
There is no more new content after 21 days, meaning it has a
limited usability.
Accessercise
This fitness app has been specifically created for people with
impairments. It provides the users with specific exercises adapted
for disabled people, as well as a directory of gym and other fitness
facilities ranked by their level of accessibility. Moreover, it
includes a social aspect as users are able to create accounts and
follow other users.
-
Its exercises are tailored for disabled people.
-
It logs users’ workouts so they can track their progress.
-
The social aspect drives user engagement and competition.
Cons
.NET MAUI Integration
When we were about to start making changes to the app, it was
suggested to us by the Microsoft team that we could switch to MAUI.,
which is the next generation of Xamarin, a framework that aims to
provide a single cross-platform development experience for building
native mobile, desktop, and web applications using .NET.
Here are some pros of switching to .NET MAUI from Xamarin:
-
Better performance: MAUI uses the latest technology to provide
better performance and faster application start-up times than
Xamarin.
-
Improved design and GUI: MAUI offers more beautiful and
responsive animations and graphics for the GUI.
-
Single codebase: MAUI allows developers to create a single
codebase for building apps across multiple platforms (such as
Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows) with only minimal adaptations
required in the code
-
Better integration with .NET ecosystem: MAUI provides better
integration with the .NET ecosystem, making it easier to use
popular .NET libraries, tools, and frameworks. This proves
extremely useful as we are going to use several libraries to
implement functionalities such as voice recognition and
Bluetooth sensor connectivity.
-
Future-proof: With MAUI, we can build future-proof app, meaning
that they will continue to work even as new devices and
operating systems are released.
Following from the above technology research, we came to a
conclusion on the devlopment tools to be used in Project-Velocity
| Technology |
Decision |
| Langauges |
XAML, C# |
| Plugins |
Plugin.BLE, CommunityToolkit.Maui, CommunityToolkit.Mvvm,
Syncfusion.Maui.Charts
|
| Services |
Microsoft Azure |
| Framework |
.NET MAUI |
| Platform |
Android |
XAML is a powerful markup language primarily used to build
the user interfaces for our application We chose it as it
allows for better maintability of code and reusability of
components making the code more Readable for future devs.
Furthermore, it is an ideal choice for creating dynamic UIs
across multiple platforms - should the app expand to other
OS platforms.
On the contrary, C# is primarily used to handle the backend
communications of the platform. Its support for asynchronous
programming made it very useful for programming features
that required the use if await and async features and its
strong community support allowed us to implement features
not yet incorporated into .NET MAUI such as bluetooth
capabilities.
.NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) is a cross-platform
framework for building mobile & desktop applications. It
allows devs to write code once and deploy it over several
platforms including IOS, Android & Windows. It also allows
for modern and flexible architecturs and features custom
fonts and shapes which is useful when tailoring an app to be
used by the impaired.